Wir sind dann wohl die Angehörigen

  • 118'
  • Germany
  • 2022

On the evening of 25 March 1996, Jan Philipp Reemtsma – tobacco-empire scion and multi-millionaire, academic, publicist and patron of the arts – was kidnapped in the vicinity of his Hamburg home. After a ransom of tens of millions of Mark was paid, Reemtsma was returned to his family. But what did his partner, psychoanalyst Ann-Kathrin Scheerer, and their son Johann do during those days of fearful waiting?

The latter, by now a successful music producer, remembered these times in his first book, which he insists on calling a novel: Wir sind dann wohl die Angehörigen (2018), which Hans-Christian Schmid has now turned into an extraordinarily sensitive piece of cinema. It is an anti-thriller that talks about the attempts of Reemtsma’s family and the police to keep up a sense of normality under the most extreme of circumstances.

Schmid shows how very deep, momentary yet nevertheless real emotions and relationships develop, in a setting that could barely be more theatrical, with cops becoming housemates etc. A subject truly to his liking, of course, as some of Schmid’s greatest films, like the made-for-TV fiction feature debut Himmel und Hölle (1994), or 23 (1998) or Requiem (2006) all deal directly with the fragile, illusory nature of reality. A masterpiece. Really.

 

Olaf Möller

  • 118'
  • Germany
  • 2022
Director
Hans-Christian Schmid
Premiere
International premiere
Country of production
Germany
Year
2022
Festival Edition
IFFR 2023
Length
118'
Medium
DCP
International title
We Are Next of Kin
Language
German
Producer
Britta Knöller
Production Company
23/5 Filmproduktion GmbH
Sales
The Match Factory GmbH
Screenplay
Michael Gutmann, Hans-Christian Schmid
Cinematography
Julian Krubasik
Editor
Hansjörg Weißbrich
Production Design
Zazie Knepper
Sound Design
Jan Petzold
Music
The Notwist
Cast
Claude Heinrich, Adina Vetter, Justus von Dohnányi, Hans Löw, Yorck Dippe, Enno Trebs, Fabian Hinrichs
Director
Hans-Christian Schmid
Premiere
International premiere
Country of production
Germany
Year
2022
Festival Edition
IFFR 2023
Length
118'
Medium
DCP
International title
We Are Next of Kin
Language
German
Producer
Britta Knöller
Production Company
23/5 Filmproduktion GmbH
Sales
The Match Factory GmbH
Screenplay
Michael Gutmann, Hans-Christian Schmid
Cinematography
Julian Krubasik
Editor
Hansjörg Weißbrich
Production Design
Zazie Knepper
Sound Design
Jan Petzold
Music
The Notwist
Cast
Claude Heinrich, Adina Vetter, Justus von Dohnányi, Hans Löw, Yorck Dippe, Enno Trebs, Fabian Hinrichs