FANTASIA 2020: Free Country
TRIGGER WARNING: mentions of torture, rape, murder
FANTASIAShortly after German reunification, two teenage sisters go missing from a backwater town in former East Germany. Patricia and Nadine were last seen getting into a Volkswagen Golf on the outskirts of town after spending their evening at the fall funfair. Out of town detectives, Patrick Stein (Trystan Pütter) and Markus Bach (Felix Kramer) are assigned to the case.
Free Country (Freies Land), is director Christian Alvart’s remake of the Spanish film Marshland and works best when the focus is on the crime at hand. The initial investigation quickly unfolds as detectives learn from locals that Patricia and Nadine had a promiscuous reputation around town and made their intentions known that they wanted to leave Löwitz behind in search of more opportunities in Berlin. Labelled as runaways, the case shifts to homicide when the raped and tortured corpses of the girls are found in the river.
The story beats that open Free Country are deeply unsettling. The detectives connect threads to other mysterious disappearances and deaths, revealing the possibility of a serial killer: a girl has died or disappeared each year after the funfair since the fall of the Berlin Wall. In an effort to make the film different from the original Marshland, Free Country becomes bogged down with elements of drug trafficking and deindustrialization. While it is natural that criminal investigations often lead to dead ends, these tangents make the film feel bloated as more and more of these plotlines are revealed.
The investigation itself is the most interesting aspect of Free Country, the film hints at several characters who could possibly be the perpetrator of the heinous crimes, keeping the audience engaged and guessing along with the onscreen detectives. The film’s atmosphere is dark and dreary, evocative of how dismal East Germany was at the time. Local factory workers strike because the owners hire Polish people to work for less pay and local girls leave for Berlin because there is nothing for them in Löwitz. The town is grey and littered with abandoned buildings, Alvart’s muted cinematography and Christoph Schauer’s eerie score elevate the haunting mystery and the anxious setting.
The two detectives feel very much like any other standard cop characters. Alvart and co-writer Siegfried Kamml inject tension between the pair as Patrick is from the West and Markus is from the East. The two have different styles, Patrick is more by the book, while Markus is more aggressive. Initially, they struggle to work together, but ultimately adapt to each other’s methods for the benefit of the investigation. There is also a subplot of Markus’ history pre-reunification that amounts to nothing, while Patrick has a pregnant wife he never sees.
Free Country tries to differentiate from Marshland, but unfortunately, this is to its detriment. Much of the added story and characters feel bloated, but the shift to post-reunified Germany works well. The film uses the harsh backdrop of a crumbling East German town to show why young girls have been easy prey for the murderer, while the atmosphere itself adds to the haunting sensation. With ecstasy runners, psychic readings, erotic photographs and trafficking, Free Country presents a tangled web of deceit that excels when it focuses on its crime roots.