Stralsund – Deadly Promise

18-year-old VITAS (Mateusz Dopieralski )arrives on the ferry from Klaipeda in Lithuania. At the port he is picked up by a man, MICHAEL LESCHEK, who is found shot dead in a parking lot a short time later.
While questioning witnesses, NINA PETERSEN (Katharina Wackernagel) encounters the young Lithuanian – and is knocked out by him. Vitas automatically becomes the prime suspect for Nina and her colleagues BENJAMIN LIETZ (Wotan Wilke Möhring), KARL HIDDE (Alexander Held) and MEYER (Michael Rotschopf) – and above all one thing: highly dangerous.
Vitas invades the house of Stralsund patrolman PAUL WARNKE (Jörg Schüttauf) and kidnaps his wife JOHANNA (Heike Trinker). Where is the connection between Vitas, the dead man on Rügen and the Warnkes? Warnke and the dead man volunteered together to support an aid organization in Lithuania. Perhaps that is where the secret lies.
Nina and her colleagues equip the Warnkes’ house with a radio direction finder and a trap circuit so that Wanke can bait Vitas as an interlocutor. But Warnke eludes the colleagues out of concern for his wife – and he actually succeeds in exchanging hostages on his own.
Nina and Benjamin learn from the confused Johanna what seems to connect Vitas and her husband: Elena Zalgiris, a Lithuanian woman who was murdered in a supermarket robbery four days ago. She could be Vitas’ mother.
Nina also gets a stronger feeling that the seemingly cold-blooded Vitas has just kidnapped the Warnkes for a reason. How well does he really know Paul Warnke, who was in Lithuania several times a year? And are there other men involved in the development aid tours? Were these tours actually used as a cover for robberies?
Vitas and Warnke drive to the Stralsund shipyard. There they meet STEFFEN KLAASEN (Alexander Hauff), a man who accompanied Warnke and Leschek on the tours for the aid organization. They question him about the murder of Elena Zalgiris. Meanwhile, Karl receives information that the three men were in Lithuania together four days ago to deliver their last aid shipment. But did they really have anything to do with Elena’s death?
At the shipyard, Klaasen, under pressure, accuses Warnke of Elena’s murder. But Vitas continues to trust Warnke. And so the two flee from the police and hole up in a gas station, which is soon surrounded by Nina and her colleagues. While Nina negotiates with Vitas, her colleagues find out that they suspect the wrong man.

The ZDF TV movie of the week is directed by Martin Eigler, who also wrote the script together with Sven Poser. In addition to Katharina Wackernagel, Wotan Wilke Möhring, Alexander Held and Michael Rotschopf, other roles are played by Jörg Schüttauf, Mateusz Dopieralski , Andreas Schröders, Heike Trinker, Alexander Hauff and others.

“Stralsund – Deadly Promise” is a production of Network Movie Film- und Fernsehproduktion GmbH & Co. KG, Cologne, Wolfgang Cimera. Martin R. Neumann is the editor at ZDF.