The Silence
Short description
A young girl named Sinikka vanishes on a hot summer night, leaving her bicycle at the exact location where another girl was murdered twenty-three years earlier. This discovery prompts a police investigation into whether the original killer has returned. As detectives and a retired investigator look for connections between the two cases, the disappearance forces those haunted by the first crime to confront long-buried secrets and personal trauma.
The film was written and directed by Baran bo Odar, marking the start of a directorial sequence that later included Who Am I and Sleepless. The ensemble cast features Ulrich Thomsen, Wotan Wilke Möhring, Katrin Sass, Sebastian Blomberg, Burghart Klaußner, and Oliver Stokowski. Produced in Germany by ZDF, Cine Plus Filmproduktion, and Lüthje & Schneider Filmproduktion, the project operated with a budget of 2 million USD.
Audience reception has been generally positive, with a rating of 6.9/10 on IMDb based on 8,900 votes and 6.6/10 on TMDB from 159 votes. Film critics provided a slightly higher assessment, giving the movie a rating of 7.1/10 across 39 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- According to director and screenwriter Baran bo Odar, he was greatly influenced by the South Korean dramatic thriller "Memories of Murder" (Bong Joon-ho, 2003).
- Before the start of filming, director and screenwriter Baran bo Odar, together with cinematographer Nicolaj Summ, specifically rewatched several Westerns in the hope of conveying the corresponding atmosphere in the film (they did not want to make just another thriller).
- The vehicle license plates are fictional. License plates with the letters “FA” are not issued anywhere in Germany.
- Before the film's theatrical release, all scenes featuring Charlie Hübner’s character were cut; the actor was simply thanked in the credits.
- The film features a police officer who is pregnant. This seems like a reference to the Coen brothers’ crime thriller “Fargo” (1995), but in reality, Julia Böwe, who played the officer, was pregnant when she auditioned, though no one knew it at the time. Böwe told Baran bo Odar about being seven months pregnant after she was cast. After some consideration, he incorporated this detail into the script.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
