"Schattenwelt" is a German movie from roughly seven years ago. The film's director (multiple Adolf Grimme award winner) has worked on several television projects before and also wrote the script for this one hear. Another screenwriter here was one of the producers behind Academy award nominee "Sophie Scholl" and, more recently, the script writer for "Night Train to Lisbon". The two protagonists are played by Ulrich Noethen and Nina Petri, who we get to see fully naked already in her very first scene. Noethen is usually an actor I appreciate and here he plays a former RAF terrorist who leaves prison after over 20 years. But what could have been a great story on re-integration into society becomes a tale on everything but this. The transformation of Petri's character was not really credible to me and I did not like the story of rediscovering fatherhood either. Uwe Kockisch, who just is not a great actor in my opinion, added nothing and same goes for Christoph Bach as the homosexual son. The movie is almost black-and-white, the colors used here are very insignificant, possibly a parallel to the movie's title "Shadow world". I actually liked this, but that was almost the only memorable thing about these 90 minutes. What also hurts the movie that it tries so hard to be significant, but really falls apart on several occasions. Especially, the background story to Noethen's character could have been so much more interesting. Not recommended.
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