The disappearance of ten-year-old Mirco on the Lower Rhine made the Mönchengladbach murder investigator Ingo Thiel known almost 13 years ago. The months of meticulous search for Mirco’s murderer was pursued nationwide and, with Heino Ferch in the role of the grumpy, taciturn investigator, it was filmed years ago and won an award. The fourth film in the Thiel series can now be seen: “Where is my sister?” ZDF will show the thriller on Monday (March 20, 8:15 p.m.). Arte had already broadcast it in October.
Again a real case provided the template. The director is Grimme Prize winner Markus Imboden. Ingo Thiel acts as a consultant for the film, who sets the scene for the beauty and sometimes sadness of the Lower Rhine landscapes.
Amelie disappears without a trace after a joint birthday party with her twin sister Marie. Her friend Jonas alerted the police the next morning. Commissioner Ingo Thiel calls the special commission “Amelie” together.
Days pass in which the investigators tread water. The information from the population turns out to be false because it applies to the twin sister who is still alive. But then Amelie’s friend Jonas, a paramedic, gradually comes under suspicion.
He has an advocate in Amelie’s mother Dorothee, played by Martina Gedeck. At first she doesn’t seem very affected by her daughter’s disappearance, so she gets him a lawyer and gets his release.
But the forensic technology gradually delivers results and finds out: Amelie was pregnant. Doubts arise: did she really not get home that night? And what did Amelie mean when she said to her sister: “I’m not as good as you think.”
Heino Ferch once described the real Thiel as follows: “He’s on fire, he’s always on adrenaline when something like this is going on. He’s a stubborn dog who doesn’t give in, that’s the secret of his success.”
As a counterpoint to the investigative work, the film plays with the supernatural: Can the twin sister Marie sense how Amelie is doing? Is it coincidence that she collapsed at a certain time on the night of the disappearance? And what about the knowledge of human nature of mother and hairdresser Dorothee, who thinks she can see through her customers when they cut their hair?
The role of the very present widow Dorothee (Martina Gedeck) is irritatingly ambivalent: sometimes she appears as a femme fatale in a red leather coat with a luxury sports car – then as a staid housewife in a blue apron. That’s how it’s supposed to be, but is it a good thing? A fifth film in the Thiel series is being planned. It is based on a solved cold case from Ingo Thiel’s desk.
ZDF: Where is my sister?
