Christiane Balthasar
Claudia Voss, honorary mayoress, is presented with a fait accompli when her Southern German district decides to build a refugee centre in her town. Some of the population are fuming and resistance grows, but there are equal amounts of willingness to help and empathy. Unexpectedly, the committed wife and mother attracts the attention of right-wing circles and faces attempts to intimidate her. The more Claudia Voss tries to mediate, the stronger the hostility becomes. A gripping contemporary thriller which paints a nuanced picture of the challenges brought by an increasingly polarized political reality. No exception, but instead a widespread, alarming phenomenon in today’s democratic societies.
The death of the patriarch in a family run Bavarian brewery leads to a ruthless power struggle between the remaining family which almost ruins the independent brewery.
Marie thinks to return to her job one year after the birth of her daughter Nora. Her husband Holger is already looking forward to two-month parental leave in which he wants to be totally there for her daughter. Her daughter? They rush into an emotional hell without warning. The youth welfare office informs them that their child has been swapped in the clinic. Sandra, the other mother with the exchanged and actually biological child of theirs, is a single-parent student. While Sandra outwardly comparatively seems to handle it with ease, Marie is completely overwhelmed. Sandra's life situation leads to a dispute with Holger, because Marie can not accept that "her" daughter should grow up with a poor single parent. When the press also gets wind of the matter, there is no turning back: The children must be exchanged.
Die Literaturagentin Lara Brunn fährt nach längerer Zeit wieder in ihren Heimatort in den Bayerischen Alpen. Anlass ist der Geburtstag ihrer Mutter. Lara wartet gemeinsam mit ihrer Schwester Sylvia im Elternhaus, doch die Mutter taucht nicht auf. Am nächsten Tag findet ein Suchtrupp in den Bergen eine männliche Leiche, die schon seit mehreren Jahren dort liegt. Kurz darauf wird in der Nähe auch die Mutter tot aufgefunden. Während Sylvia an einen Unfalltod glaubt, vermutet Lara einen Mord. Sie stößt auf einige Ungereimtheiten und muss schnell feststellen, dass sie nur sehr wenig über das Leben ihrer Mutter weiß. Auch die eigene Vergangenheit wird immer ungewisser.
Polizeiruf 110 is a long-running German language detective television series. The first episode was broadcast 27 June 1971 in the German Democratic Republic, and after the dissolution of Fernsehen der DDR the series was picked up by ARD. It was originally created as a counterpart to the West German series Tatort, and quickly became a public favorite. In contrast with other television crime series, in which killings are practically the primary focus, while Tatort handled homicide cases, the cases handled in the GDR TV's Polizeiruf were more often the more frequent, and less serious, crimes such as domestic violence, extortion, fraud, theft and juvenile delinquency, as well as alcoholism, child abuse and rape. Contrary to Tatort, which concentrated on the primary characters and their private lives, police procedure was the center of attention of Polizeiruf, especially in the earlier episodes. The scriptwriters attached particular importance to representation of the criminal and his state of mind, as well as the context of the crime. Many episodes aimed to teach and enlighten the audience about what does and what doesn't constitute appropriate behaviour and appropriate thought, rather than just to entertain. Polizeiruf was one of the few broadcasts by GDR media in which the real problems and difficulties of the supposedly more advanced socialist society could be displayed and discussed to some extent, albeit in a fictionalized and pedagogicalized environment.
Tatort is a long-running German/Austrian/Swiss, crime television series set in various parts of these countries. The show is broadcast on the channels of ARD in Germany, ORF 2 in Austria and SF1 in Switzerland. The first episode was broadcast on November 29, 1970. The opening sequence for the series has remained the same throughout the decades, which remains highly unusual for any such long-running TV series up to date. Each of the regional TV channels which together form ARD, plus ORF and SF, produces its own episodes, starring its own police inspector, some of which, like the discontinued Schimanski, have become cultural icons. The show appears on DasErste and ORF 2 on Sundays at 8:15 p.m. and currently about 30 episodes are made per year. As of March 2013, 865 episodes in total have been produced. Tatort is currently being broadcast in the United States on the MHz Worldview channel under the name Scene of the Crime.
