Shadow Friend

Miriam Stein and Golo Euler play the desperate parents of a kidnapped child in the “TV Movie of the Week” directed by Michael Schneider – a thriller based on the novel of the same name by Christine Drews.

This is not how Katrin Ortrup (Miriam Stein) had imagined her return home to Bonn. As soon as she arrives, her father Franz (Harald Krassnitzer) suffers a heart attack. He actually wanted to take care of his only grandchild, little Leo (David Grüttner), and thus make it easier for Katrin to take over his medical practice. Katrin’s husband Thomas (Golo Euler) is no help either, as he is still tied to Frankfurt for work. Fortunately, Katrin meets Tanja (Britta Hammelstein), a young woman she immediately takes a liking to, on the playground. Both have a similar sense of humor and jump in for each other when things get tight with picking up the kids.

So Tanja also watches Leo when Katrin is called to the doctor’s office for an emergency. But when she returns to the playground, Tanja has disappeared – and the boy with her. For the desperate mother, a hellish trip begins. Inspector Schneidmann (Jule Ronstedt) initially thinks Katrin is out of her mind. But then it turns out that there is no Tanja at all. Nobody knows this woman. Her cell phone number is not assigned, and in the house where Katrin says she lives, another woman opens the door. When the kidnapper finally answers, she makes an outrageous demand, and Katrin realizes that she has met a shadow friend.

Other roles are played by Helmut Berger, Dirk Ossig, Jörg Reimers, Liza Reichardt, Otto Koch and others.

“Die Schattenfreundin” is a production of Network Movie Film- und Fernsehproduktion Cologne. The producers are Bettina Wente and Wolfgang Cimera. The ZDF editorial team is headed by Daniel Blum.