"Macht euch keine Sorgen!" is a German television movie that premiered back in April 2018, so this one is over 1.5 years old now. The names of writers Liers and Simon are not too known and that is because they have not written many screenplays so far in their careers. The director, however, is. It is Emily Atef and this is her new work after the super-successful "3 Tage in Quiberon", so definitely a step back. As for the cast, it is okay for a small screen release. No truly big names, but probably some actors you will recognize if you are into German films, most of all Jörg Schüttauf, who plays one of the two central characters, probably even the one more in the center as we do not really find out about his character's son too much unless he doesn't find out about it the very same moment. Like almost all German television films it runs for pretty much exactly 90 minutes. This one is the story about a father whose son has left the country to stay with the IS. Or well, this is only partially true because it is really more about what happens when he returns to his family and the obstacles they have to overcome to really get along with each other again. Still this film could have been very differently. It could have been the story of a man dealing with his son's disappearance for the entire film, maybe even with his son's death when he would have been killed by anti-terrorism units. Or it could have been the film of the father going to the country where his son was last seen and looking for him for the entire movie. But it is something different, even if these aspects are included at least partially here early on. The consequence is not too positive really. It feels immediately as if this movie tries to be way too much, way too significant given the production background and also given the running time. It feels as if they wanted to come up with an epic character study combined with a story on important subjects like terrorism and religion, so you could say this one was doomed from the very start. Nobody really could have made it work. There are aspects that keep it from being a failure such as Atef's solid direction and Schüttauf (with his bright blue eyes) makes more with the character than you could expect. Solid casting decision.
Still, it becomes painfully clear on many occasions that as a whole it is not working out. The attention to detail is shoddy, gently-speaking, and I will mention a few examples. Right at the very start when these police officers come to the house I genuinely doubt this is what things would look like if your son is suspected of having joined the IS. If you see it, you know what I mean. What else? The moment when the girl screams at him in the gym is truly cringeworthy and feels so fake, partially because of bad acting, partially because of bad writing. There are more moments, like the little sister knows the boy's password of course. Not in a million years. Or when near the end, there is this huge conflict escalation scene and one scene later it feels almost harmonic with them playing table tennis together and more idyllic moments in the sun follow right afterwards. Very very strange. Like a complete 180° turn of events that made no sense at all to me with what happened just before that. Admittedly the ending or, to be more precise, the very last shot felt better again showing us it is not all happy and perfect, but he is still practicing Islam and praying, so it was lie what he said before that or at that point he really wasn't praying. But it's not important. Honestly, overall this was not a good movie on such a subject full of conflicts etc. that totally would have deserved a better execution. Much better in fact. The only thing that keeps me from giving even less stars here (except the two aspects I mentioned already) is that they did not turn this into a shameless propaganda movie as it could have been too looking at the television channel who aired this first and their very biased take on journalism. But moments or scenes like Schüttauf's character finding his son so ridiculously quickly at the other end of the world make it very easy for me to give this movie a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
Still, it becomes painfully clear on many occasions that as a whole it is not working out. The attention to detail is shoddy, gently-speaking, and I will mention a few examples. Right at the very start when these police officers come to the house I genuinely doubt this is what things would look like if your son is suspected of having joined the IS. If you see it, you know what I mean. What else? The moment when the girl screams at him in the gym is truly cringeworthy and feels so fake, partially because of bad acting, partially because of bad writing. There are more moments, like the little sister knows the boy's password of course. Not in a million years. Or when near the end, there is this huge conflict escalation scene and one scene later it feels almost harmonic with them playing table tennis together and more idyllic moments in the sun follow right afterwards. Very very strange. Like a complete 180° turn of events that made no sense at all to me with what happened just before that. Admittedly the ending or, to be more precise, the very last shot felt better again showing us it is not all happy and perfect, but he is still practicing Islam and praying, so it was lie what he said before that or at that point he really wasn't praying. But it's not important. Honestly, overall this was not a good movie on such a subject full of conflicts etc. that totally would have deserved a better execution. Much better in fact. The only thing that keeps me from giving even less stars here (except the two aspects I mentioned already) is that they did not turn this into a shameless propaganda movie as it could have been too looking at the television channel who aired this first and their very biased take on journalism. But moments or scenes like Schüttauf's character finding his son so ridiculously quickly at the other end of the world make it very easy for me to give this movie a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
