A little girl stands abandoned at the airport, her father has just been kidnapped. This is how the sixth TV case about the German ambassador Karla Lorenz (Natalia Wörner) begins.
Berlin – Since 2016 it is the sixth film in the ARD series “Die Diplomatin” in which Natalia Wörner – in real life the woman at the side of Foreign Minister Heiko Maas – can be seen as diplomat Karla Lorenz, who works for the Foreign Office.
The thriller “The Diplomat – Murder in St. Petersburg” comes out this Saturday (September 18, 8:15 pm, Das Erste). It is a very personal case in which Lorenz occasionally even seems overwhelmed and shows an unusually sensitive and vulnerable side that almost kills her at the gripping end in the freezing cold. But one after the other.
Actually, the ambassador in this film was not supposed to be in Berlin, but rather start her new post in Rome from Prague. But because the filming there was not possible due to Corona, the sixth case “Murder in St. Petersburg” takes place in the German capital (despite the misleading title).
Karla Lorenz (Natalia Wörner) is officially on vacation in Berlin, and her boyfriend Jan Horava (Alexander Beyer) with her too. But soon there are three of them, because little Manja Petrow (Rena Harder) is forced to move in with them. Her father, the German-Russian journalist Kolja Petrow (Beat Marti), was kidnapped at the airport; he had previously been able to hide a data stick in the toilet and Manja in a rental car. Karla and Kolja have known each other since childhood, he had written her phone number on Manja’s arm.
A little later the news comes that Kolja’s girlfriend was murdered in St. Petersburg and that he is now in custody at the Russian embassy. The case is highly political because it actually takes place shortly before a federal election. It is about political influence, the role of the secret services and the press – and mainly friendship, betrayal and trust.
Rebecca Mahnkopf (screenplay) and Roland Suso Richter (director) have staged a dark and exciting crime thriller set against a wintry backdrop. The film was shot at Berlin-Brandenburg Airport (BER), at the Russian Embassy, at the Foreign Office, at the ARD capital studio and at the end of the film on Teufelsberg, an abandoned US Army wiretapping system.
The work in the Foreign Office is presented quite realistically, as is the explosiveness of the alarming and topical issue shortly before an important election. Karla Lorenz’s cooperation alone seems constructed, a foreign policy crisis had to be laboriously thought out, which takes place in Berlin, so that she can support the Minister of State as a foreign policy expert.
So she has to get by without an embassy car and without employees – even her personal assistant Nikolaus Tanz (Jannik Schümann) is not there this time. Instead, the private side of the previously so cool woman ambassador can now be seen. Her friend takes care of Manja touchingly while the police protection is at the door. dpa
