On May 8 of 1986, a pre-teen girl is raped and murdered in rural Germany. (Our view is mostly obscured by waving wheat stalks.) Twenty-three years later, another young girl disappears on the same day. The cops are on the job, but the fact that almost nothing resembling police work is done for the first hour or so should alert the viewer that cracking the case is not the point here. The point is the people and their wracked interiors: the frozen mother of the first girl, the agonized and uncertain parents of the second, the recently widowed detective on the case, the obsessed cop who failed back in ’86. And oh, yes, the pedophilic perpetrator and his silent witness. Everyone is human, after all. The image is rich and crisp; the psychology and characterization, less so. A couple of things remain inexplicable; a couple more, unbelievable. (2010) — Matthew Lickona
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