Der Fall Bachmeier on AllMovie

This docu-drama by director Hark Bohm is about a famous murder case in West Germany during the early 1980s (the Marie Bachmeier case). Marie Sellbach (the fictional Bachmeier played by Marie Colbin) is a mother struggling to raise her seven-year-old daughter while working at a bar in Hamburg and carrying on two relationships - one with the father of her daughter, and one with another worker at the bar. When Marie's daughter disappears, the mother fears the worst and her fears are well-founded - her daughter was sexually attacked and murdered. The murderer was caught and brought to trial, and in broad daylight, in the middle of the courtroom, Marie raises a handgun kills him. Her action was immediately picked up by all the papers and set off a storm of response throughout the country. For viewers who would like more information on the case, this film leans toward the sensational rather than the factual. At the same time, director Bohm was racing against the clock to get this film completed while the Bachmeier case was still in the news, and before Burkhard Dreist could come out with his version of the story, Anna's Mutter. Both films on the Bachmeier case were released within a few days of each other.