“Now we have an adventure to face”

Hamburg, March 1996: Jan-Philipp Reemtsma, philologist and heir to millions, is kidnapped. The perpetrators are demanding 20 million Deutschmarks, and it will take 33 days for him to be released again. In the new film by director Hans-Christian Schmidt, as the title “We are then probably the relatives” suggests, it is less about the deed than about the waves it makes in the family that has suddenly been torn apart.

The film is based on the 2018 book of the same name by Reemtsma’s son Johann Scheerer. Today he is best known as a music producer. In his studio in Hamburg he has already worked with bands and artists such as Peter Doherty and At the Drive-In. In 2021 he also published the novel Unheimlich nah, in which he deals with the time after the kidnapping in fictionalized form.

Schmidt explicitly didn’t want to shoot a thriller or crime novel, as in Scheerer’s book the focus always remains on the teenager Johann (Claude Heinrich, known for example from “Dark”), whose adolescent rebellion is abruptly interrupted by the disappearance of his father, and his mother Ann- Kathrin Scheerer (Adina Vetter). “For us, the narrative perspective of the 13-year-old boy was particularly exciting,” says Schmid. The film is a chance to tell something about “the dynamics of a family when one of the family is in mortal danger and the others have to react to it”.

But the focus is also on police work: In reality, this did not always go smoothly, after several attempts to transfer money failed, the family turned to private intermediaries. The film meticulously observes the conflicts that arise in the confined space between the carers sleeping in the living room and the family. “We show more clearly than in Johann’s book why the police’s approach didn’t work for the relatives at all,” says Schmid.

Interview with Hans Christian Schmid:

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