There is a pocket knife, a fishing rod and a bicycle: Ronny is celebrating his tenth birthday – but not at home, but in the children’s home. Since he was three years old, the boy has been living in different institutions. His father is dead, his mother Sabine (Ceci Chuh) was a drug addict, which is why the youth welfare office intervened. Ronny is allowed to visit his mother and her new partner Rene (Oskar Bökelmann) for his birthday. There is a fight in the house, Rene beats up the boy. Instead of helping her son, Sabine just watches apathetically. Ronny makes his way back to the children’s home on his new bike, but he never gets there. A race against time begins for chief inspector Doreen Brasch (Claudia Michelsen) and her team. Who has anything to do with the boy’s disappearance? Not only his mother and her partner belong to the group of suspects, but also the educator Matthias (Thomas Schubert) from the children’s home and Gordon (Valentin Oppermann), the son of the home director, whom a classmate describes as a “freak”.
The film is titled The Missing Boy, but it’s the mother-son relationships that make it so intense. There is Ronny’s mother Sabine, who wants to get her drug addiction under control so that her son can live with her again instead of in the home. She loves Ronny and hopes that he will be found, even if she seems overwhelmed with the upbringing. Gaby Kleinschmidt (Maja Schöne) takes care of numerous children as director of the home, but she just can’t get through to her own son Gordon. There is a strange distance between the two. In return, Commissioner Brasch seems to find access to the teenager. Because she is also the mother of a grown-up son who has broken off contact with her. So here three dysfunctional relationships meet. Screenwriter Jan Braren and director Barbara Ott created a moving story that also benefits from a brilliant cast.
As a viewer, you want to know more about why the director of the children’s home and her son have such a broken relationship. The film doesn’t provide any explanations. In addition, several scenes take place at night, in the rain or in the forest and are therefore staged very darkly – in addition to the already difficult subject.
For Doreen Brasch, the investigations become an emotional challenge in two respects. On the one hand, they bring back memories of her own childhood, which she spent in the same home as the missing Ronny. On the other hand, she clashes with her colleague Kriminalrat Uwe Lemp (Felix Vörtler) when they talk about an earlier case in which a little boy also disappeared and could not be saved. Brasch wants to prevent this this time with all his might.
Great actors and a story that touches you: It’s worth tuning in.
Commissioner Doreen Brasch recently investigated these cases:
