Antibodies

Christian Alvart's film opens with the capture of a serial killer. Gabriel Engel, arrested in Berlin, confesses to everything but one murder: a girl killed out in the countryside. Michael Martens, the village policeman from that town, travels to the city to speak with him, and as the conversation continues the investigation shifts. The question is no longer what the killer did but who in Martens's own town is hiding what. The idea is in the title. Engel argues that evil is transmitted like a virus and that everyone carries it; Martens, religious, rule-bound and certain of himself, resists. The film does not try to prove the thesis, but it erodes Martens's certainty step by step. Alvart's construction carries traces of The Silence of the Lambs and Seven, while the rural passages are shot in a cold, closed realism particular to German cinema. Who it is for: viewers who like severe European psychological thrillers. Who it is not for: anyone who would rather not approach child murder and abuse, on which the film never softens.