User Reviews

"Der Verdacht" is an award-winning German live action short film from 2008, so this one is already over a decade old and it runs for minimally over 26 minutes. The official German title means "Suspicion", but for the international release they went with "Suspect", so there is more of a reference to the person than the situation for that, even if both is so inevitably connected here that it maybe does not make a difference. the writer and director is Felix Hassenfratz, who was only in his mid20s when he made this movie and it was far from his first career effort. At least in terms of short films. He is still under the age of 40 now and it took exactly a decade after this one here for him to finally come up with his first "big" full feature film that included several pretty experienced cast members and known actors. But we shall talk about that one on another occasion. as for this one here, the actors are also somewhat experienced, but not particularly famous at all. This does not make them bad or anything though. The cast is maybe the film's biggest strength. Lead actress is Anne Weinknecht and we see the film from her perspective, a woman who just leads a normal life at the countryside, but everything changes when her husband is suspected of having murdered a 20-year-old woman. The townsfok begin to ignore her. She works as a baker with her husband and people stop buying from her. Also at the local choir she is treated more like an outsider and even her best friend is slightly becoming more distant. As a consequence, the main character also begins to wonder if maybe the man actually really was part of such a horrible crime. We get a quietly convincing escalation scene at the end with the gun, but we do not get a solution or revelation if it was him. It is not too important anyway. This is a character study of his partner and not a crime movie. The man is played by Heinrich Schmieder and if we take a look at him being in the Oscar-nominated Hirschbiegel movie "Der Untergang", he is probably the most known cast member. He is also the most tragic though because he died not too long after this movie in a terrible accident in Italy. But back to this film here. I give it a thumbs-up. It's effortlessly tense and atmospheric and certainly a success for such a young filmmaker. The perfect 10 out of 10 is still way too much from the other reviewer, but the outcome here is something to use as a good foundation for a successful career. I am curious what Hassenfratz will come up with in the coming years and decades. until he does, go check this one out. The director himself uploaded it on vimeo.