Rich or dead

“Rich or dead” – Lars Becker continues the story of friendship and betrayal between Diller&Kessel with his new film.

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Diller (Nicholas Ofczarek) and Kessel (Fritz Karl) are back: Kessel is now living in divorce, but wants to win back Claire (Jessica Schwarz) and the children and turn his life around. He has been clean and incorruptible for months. But no one believes him, not even his best friend Diller.

When the two find out that their “old buddy” Mohammed (Sahin Eryilmaz) is on his way with his buddies Abdel and Randy to rob a bank – of all places, the one where Kessel is also a customer – they immediately warn the branch manager by phone. But the banker doesn’t take the warning seriously, instead passing the phone to Claire Kessel, whose loan application for her daughter Ruby’s (Cya Emma Blaack) surgery he has just turned down. Before Claire can react, the gangsters raid the branch and take Ruby hostage on the run. The sick girl suffers a seizure and ends up in intensive care. Kessel races to Mohammed’s cell phone store, where the perpetrators are counting the captured money. Abdel is able to escape. When Randy pulls out his gun, Kessel shoots him.

During the investigation by prosecutor Soraya (Melika Foroutan), Mohammed heavily incriminates Kessel and contradicts his self-defense claim. When it becomes known that the loot is not complete, suspicion falls on Kessel.
Kessel has other things on his mind. He has found out that Claire is having an affair with Diller: his wife and his best friend! And then cocaine is found in Kessel’s apartment and he is sent to jail. From prison, Kessel can do nothing to prove his innocence or protect his family. Desperate, he enlists his friend Diller to do so in his stead.

The desire to send the unusual detective duo Diller & Kessel from Georg Oswald’s novel adaptation “Unter Feinden” back onto the streets of Hamburg was the starting point for its prequel “Zum Sterben zu früh”. Lars Becker won the 2016 German Television Award for it in the “Best Director” category. And “Reich oder tot” is also a ballad about friendship and betrayal, in which the actors Fritz Karl, Nicholas Ofczarek, Jessica Schwarz, Anna Loos, Martin Brambach, Sahin Eryilmaz, Narges Rashidi, Melika Foroutan and Francis Fulton-Smith shine.

Reich oder tot” was produced by Network Movie, Cologne, Wolfgang Cimera and Bettina Wente. Daniel Blum is the ZDF editor.