“Zero” (ARD): Film with Heike Makatsch jumps and stumbles in the first

The bestseller film adaptation “Zero” on ARD with Heike Makatsch is set in the future and yet is close to the present.

Berlin – A television count on ARD can hardly be more up-to-date. Just a little more than a week has passed since locked documents from the Internet company Facebook became public. They testify to internal but constantly rejected criticism, of algorithms that generate hate spirals, of special regulations for prominent customers who are allowed to denounce, disinform and discredit unmolested. Because their digital ejection increases the number of users.

The television film “Zero” (ARD), written by Johannes Betz based on a successful novel by Marc Elsberg, broadcast as part of the “Near Future” series in the first, jumps a little further into the future. There “Freemee Glasses” are all the rage. Frames that are reminiscent of glasses, but have extensive access to personal data and pass it on to the wearer at first glance.

In this way, the journalist Cynthia Bonsant (Heike Makatsch) learns about her counterpart: “Geoffrey Pesceur, * 1983, born in Canada, divorced, 1 child”. Further information available against payment of 2.99 euros or the redemption of five smart points.

“Zero” (ARD): Overrun by technical developments

Cynthia Bonsant tries to get back to work after two years of caring for her terminally ill husband. A lot has happened in the meantime. “You differentiate between the web and the real world?” Scoffs editor-in-chief Tony Brenner (Axel Stein). “Wow. I’m sorry. ”And he laughs because Cynthia shows her application as a printout.

Argh anachronistic, this former star journalist. Perhaps he would have sent her home by return of post had it not been for a drone attack on the vehicle convoy of the Minister of the Interior and the Chancellery during their conversation and broadcast it directly on the editorial screens. Responsibility for the action is taken by a group called Zero, which is committed to the fight against the “data octopuses”. Cynthia gets her first assignment: a background story about Zero.

“Zero” (ARD) – Today in the first: Those who sprint will be rewarded

Freemee has launched another innovative product. An app gives its users rules of conduct that, at first glance, improve social compatibility. Those who follow the recommendations of the computer voice well receive smart points as a reward. Hardly futuristic anymore, we know something similar from China.

Freemee even sells devices and apps for free. But behind the displayed altruism there are completely different interests. The Zero activists are on the trail of the secret. Certain incidents have also aroused Cynthia’s suspicion. Your research is taking a new direction, and it is not without its dangers. The first deaths will soon occur.

Basically, it is very welcome when TV films like “Zero” (ARD) or TV series take up current topics and take a time-critical position instead of, as is the case with so many productions by commercial program and streaming providers, with fantasy, horror and Avoid thriller productions positioning and commitment. Although the novel adaptation “Zero”, which is strongly condensed compared to the original, is thematically fascinating, the technical implementation is not very convincing.

“Zero” (ARD): Berlin is like dead

Because time and again the narrative flow of “Zero” on ARD is disturbed by irritating mistakes. Not very credible, for example, that the technophile, fashion-conscious school clique around Cynthia’s seventeen-year-old daughter Viola (Luise Emilie Tschersich) regularly meets on a dreary suburban wasteland.

The scene of the event is an ugly, desolate and almost deserted Berlin, with no explanation for the obvious decline of public life. But if the dramaturgy of the story makes passers-by necessary, they are of course promptly there, thanks to the assistant director.

People live and work in sparsely furnished, cold rooms that are in complete contradiction to the consumer incentives of the incriminated corporations. To whom do they sell their goods that apparently nobody wants, not even the well-to-do circles?

It gets downright silly when Cynthia’s journalist colleague goes about his work with one hand typing on the wall with the netbook in his arms. A great achievement if he can keep it up for a full day at work. And a teenager who is completely fixated on his smartphone shouldn’t notice that the thing is falling out of his hand?

In this way, the story keeps jumbling and stumbling, does not run smoothly, is recognizable as an arranged drama. Perhaps director Jochen Alexander Freydank, who owns a short film Oscar, had exactly this in mind, following Brecht’s idea of shattering illusions. But then the necessary consistency is lacking, his staging meanders half-heartedly between the concepts.

The product advertising, which in this conspicuous form is more familiar from streaming services such as Netflix, would not have been in Brecht’s sense at all. (Harald Keller)