Corona just doesn’t want to end. After almost two years, the pandemic has now arrived as the subject of a television film.
Berlin – The topic of Corona has so far played a role in almost no German television film. And if so, it was more of a minor aspect. Now a drama is dedicated to the pandemic: “The world stands still” can be seen on Monday at 8:15 pm on ZDF.
The beginning of the film is also the end. A woman is being artificially ventilated. It is the Constance intensive care physician Dr. Carolin Mellau (Natalia Wörner). The following is a look back at the beginning of 2020: Carolin actually wants to take a break from her job in the hospital to take care of her children, because her husband Stefan (Marcus Mittermeier) wants to go on tour with his chamber orchestra.
But the tour will soon be canceled and Carolin will soon be on duty around the clock as a member of the crisis team. As an anesthetist who intubates Covid-19 infected patients, she bears a high risk of infection, which she ignores. This also applies to home, where daughter Luzy (Lilli Barshy) and son Tim (Jona Eisenblätter) spend the day because they cannot go to school.
Then the virus strikes properly, the word “systemically important” makes the rounds, and livelihood worries quickly arise. Stefan loses his income, an older neighbor turns out to be a corona denier and becomes seriously ill from it himself, the untrained clinic staff is soon exhausted, especially since there is a lack of protective clothing, ventilators and intensive care beds.
The scenes with sick and lonely patients are the most dramatic in the entire film, which is an exception here, because the wife is there with a dying person. Carolin, on the other hand, is not allowed to visit her mother in the nursing home. A lot of other things are simply no longer possible.
Director Anno Saul (58, “Charité”) has packed almost too much and everything into his TV drama that is associated with the first wave of the disease in spring 2020: infection, contact bans, quarantine, conspiracies, lessons at home and of course the hygiene rules . Saul packs some knowledge into the dialogues and occasionally cuts documentary scenes into the plot of the game.
The director shot under strict hygiene regulations in the middle of the second lock-down in spring 2021, with professional advice from doctors and true to the original in a disused hospital.
Anno Saul says in a ZDF interview: “The touch was important to me. That everyone doesn’t know exactly what’s coming and still has to prepare somehow. And what is easy to forget is that the private life of the medical staff was turned upside down, just like that of everyone else. “
Natalia Wörner (54, “Under different circumstances”) literally sinks into the role of a responsible mother and self-sacrificing doctor – she manages the balancing act between compassion and responsibility extremely well. The smaller roles are also very well cast with Lena Stolze and Klaus Pohl as the optician couple and with Bettina Stucky as the resolute and black-humored head nurse.
The characters all embody the main themes of this successful film in different ways: fear, powerlessness, skepticism, despair, insecurity and excessive demands. All of this is still very much present for today’s viewer as the pandemic is far from over. dpa
