An 8-year-old girl is dead, investigations begin in the area. “Police Call” is close to its characters and the content is difficult to digest.

Police call scene with Chief Inspector Henry Koitzsch (Peter Kurth) Photo: Felix Abraham/filmpool fiction/MDR

This police thriller should be preceded by a warning: the police call addresses the issues of sexual violence against children and child murder.

Now alcohol-prone and scarred Inspector Henry Koitzsch (Peter Kurth) can no longer drive because he was visibly drunk when the police pulled him over. This not only resulted in him being banned from driving, but also a visit to an old-fashioned police psychologist. Here he is supposed to stack balls while talking to the gray man about the “king of alcohol” written by Jack London.

What begins here with great joy soon turns into a police thriller that is sometimes difficult to bear: eight-year-old Inka (Merle Staacken) has disappeared. While Koitzsch's colleague Michael Lehmann (Peter Schneider) hopes and prays that the girl will be found alive, Koitzsch is less optimistic about the case.

Unfortunately, he is right because the girl is found dead and abused in an orchard. To protect the father of the family, Lehmann, Koitzsch watches the crime scene alone because he believes that at least one of the two detectives must be able to think clearly.

A sex offender?

The work now begins with a comparison of the personal data of relevant offenders with criminal records. And investigations are also being carried out in the Inka area: does the girl's former alcoholic father have something to hide? Are you haunted by demons from times past?

In addition, the fat mathematics teacher Kerin (Sascha Nathan) also comes into the focus of attention of the investigators, since the autopsy showed that it must have been a very heavy person who attacked the child. And it is actually difficult to evaluate the behavior of the always sweaty Krein: Is he that somewhat strange but kind teacher who takes special care of “his daughters” and helps and worries about them? Or is he a sex offender?

For the Halle new construction mafia the question is quickly and easily clarified: Kerin is guilty. And so, the professor is beaten and humiliated by a self-proclaimed vigilante in front of numerous passersby. Koitzsch is also not quite sure how to value this man and pays him a visit. And so, the two sit across from each other in a room full of teddy bears; On the one hand, the food addict Krein, on the other, the alcoholic Koitzsch. Koitzsch's breakthrough occurred by chance during the celebration of “People's Police Day”, when he was talking to his two veteran colleagues about a very similar case from the GDR era.

difficult to digest

This police thriller is told calmly, humanely and always close to the characters, based on a script by Clemens Meyer and Thomas Stuber. And it is precisely this everydayness in the context of the new development zone of the city of Halle and the discretion of the actors and the dramaturgy that makes it so difficult to digest.

In the end, there are only victims here, whether they are the surviving relatives, the suspects or even the inspectors. Not to trivialize alcohol addiction, but after a case like this, it's understandable why people start drinking.