"Tatort" from Freiburg: The schoolyard princess

Now is the time.

Now it remains to be seen whether the world will give a woman another chance after five years in prison.

Sara Manzer (Johanna Wokalek) hears the keys in the door of her cell.

She puts on the sunglasses to help the transformation along, and follows the guard to the exit gate.

And at least: Marlene (Sophie Lutz) is standing in front of the gate with her best friend smile.

She even organized a surprise party with Sara's daughter Evi (Samirah Breuer), Sara's ex-husband (Michael Klammer), his new partner and lively prison acquaintance Ines (Annette Strasser).

Everyone strives for normality - tense, but the good will is there.

But the act – Sara is said to have killed her father, a publisher from Freiburg who had become rich with travel books, while drunk on alcohol – hangs over everything like a dark cloud.

A fateful phone ring follows.

Every classic crime thriller needs a phone ring that changes everything.

In the case of "Sara's Confession", the new "crime scene" from Freiburg, it directs Sara's gaze out the window: the former police officer Benno Rose, the officer from the motorcycle squad who was the first to reach the crime scene six years ago, wants to meet her.

Sara refuses and sees him standing in front of the house in the dark.

Benno Rose's body is found the next morning.

Inspectors Franziska Tobler (Eva Löbau) and Friedemann Berg (Hans-Jochen Wagner) quickly suspect Sara – a woman who was once considered the “schoolyard princess” and was admired by classmates like Tobler.

Two puzzles in one

Soon the circumstances of the manslaughter five years ago come to the table.

In the creative chaos that characterizes the apartment of the early retired police officer Rose, there are several copies of the Manzer case in addition to material on the world's most puzzling criminal cases.

He didn't let go of Rose.

So, "Sara's Confession," named for the problematic moment that was crucial to the court's verdict at the time, lures us with two mysteries in one.

Apart from Tobler's memories of the "Schoolyard Princess" and new shoes that Berg unsuccessfully tries to rid of the feces (a crude symbolic image), the sensitivities of the inspectors in this "crime scene" play no role.

Astrid Ströher's screenplay focuses on the small details of the investigation: research, drink coffee, understand, dig up newspaper articles from the archive, view surveillance images.

The gnarled former head of investigation Werner Bauder (Werner Wölbern) and the vain managing director of the Manzer publishing house (Holger Stockhaus) are visited.

A chase to the icy Wiwili Bridge and stretching exercises in search of a stable mobile phone connection in the area that would enable video calls provide movement.

"Sara's Confession" will appeal to anyone who appreciates "Tatort" as a liturgical event.

Johanna Wokalek, who is known as the returnees Lene in Steinbichler's "Hierankl", Gudrun Ensslin in the "Baader Meinhof Complex" and Claire Kornitzer in the NS drama "Landgericht", plays the main role in the restrainedly staged episode (directed by Kai Wessel).

She mimes the insecure Sara Manzer naturally, quietly and reservedly.

The cameraman Andreas Schäfer, a veteran filming his seventeenth SWR "Tatort" here, unobtrusively brings out the hesitation and groping that characterizes Sara's first steps into freedom: a woman in the waiting room of her own story, difficult to interpret.

In an interrogation video from the time after her father's violent death, we see Sara Manzer as a make-up, alcohol-scarred party figure.

This is old Sara, who with her lifestyle was not a candidate for the publishing successor, who looks lost in her life and has been stamped with the image of the sex-addicted patricide by the tabloid press.

In the present we experience Sara differently: helplessly smoking, searchingly staring into the mirror, only smiling carefree in the presence of her daughter.

She longs for a new life, but in the conditions of the internet society - "You wouldn't believe what you can find on the internet once you start looking" - it's even harder than it already is.

And Rose's death doesn't exactly help.

Old Sara would be credited with manslaughter.

That the new Sara kills a man shortly after her release from prison is far from the truth.

She told investigators in the Benno Rose case that she only went for a short walk after the welcome party.

Because that wasn't possible in prison for a long time.

The scene of the

runs on Sunday at 8:15 p.m. in the first.