Night Shift – The Dead Girl

Hamburg’s nights are getting hot again. The focus of the eighth “Nachtschicht” by writer and director Lars Becker is once again the night shift of the so-called Kriminaldauerdienst (KDD) in the hot spot of the port city of Hamburg; portrayed by the attractive and top-class quartet of actors Barbara Auer, Armin Rohde, Minh-Khai Phan-Thi and Pierre Semmler – a colorful police force with cult potential.

Dressed in a down jacket, pajamas and bathing slippers, the victim, a high-class prostitute, was recovered from a lake. On the body of the dead woman, there are felt-tip pen marks indicating that she wanted to undergo cosmetic surgery. Police psychologist Lisa Brenner (Barbara Auer) learns from the head of the clinic that the dead woman is the Russian Olga Lukalenko. She was accompanied by an elderly gentleman – Friedrich Otto Winterstein (Jürgen Prochnow), the head of a well-known private bank.
Originally Olga came from Siberia and was brought to Germany with the help of a smuggler. In the dead woman’s appointment book, “Client 7” – a regular customer – appears again and again. Is this Winterstein? Did he fear a scandal?
Chief Inspector Erichsen (Armin Rohde) uses his contacts in the Hamburg milieu. Olga’s pimp Dicky Mangold (Dietmar Bär) confirms the Winterstein theory. Erichsen learns from Olga’s colleagues that Olga had not settled her accounts with Dicky correctly and had been lining her own pockets. Is that why she had to die?

Other roles are played by Pierre Semmler, Lisa Maria Potthoff, Sascha Göpel and others. Lars Becker also wrote the script and directed this “Nachtschicht”. It is a ZDF commissioned production by Network Movie, Film- und Fernsehproduktion GmbH & Co. KG, Reinhold Elschot; producers are Bettina Wente and Andi Wecker. Daniel Blum is the ZDF editor.