Reemtsma hostage drama by Hans-Christian Schmid

The telephone is omnipresent: whether in the Reemtsma/Scheerer house, where the family waits under extreme tension together with the police for the next call from the hostage-takers - or in the film's soundtrack, into which the band "The Notwist" has cleverly woven an ominous ringtone. Directors Hans-Christian Schmid knows how to take the audience into an exceptional situation and transfer the tension into the cinema seat. And he does so on all levels of the audiovisual keyboard. However, the reason that led him to adapt Johann Scheerer's novel into a film is a different one: "I was immediately fascinated by the family history woven into the story. We didn't want to tell a classic true crime story, there's much more to it than that," reveals the Directors, who wrote the script together with Script Writer Michael Gutmann.

At the centre of the film is 13-year-old Johann Scheerer, who experiences what real fear means for the first time during 33 agonising days of being held hostage. At the beginning of the film, the somewhat tense and distant relationship between Johann and his father is explored in a few scenes. When his father disappears and only a blackmail letter is left behind, however, everything changes. Claude Heinrich takes on the role of Johann in "We Are Next of Kin". The 16-year-old Berliner has already impressed with his nuanced acting in the Netflix series "Dark" and Hermine Huntgeburth's "Lindenberg - Mach dein Ding". In Hans-Christian Schmid's new drama, all the cameras are now on him. "We looked at photos of Johann Scheerer at the time. He struck me as a reserved observer - and that's exactly what we saw in Claude. He simply brought a lot to the role," says Hans-Christian Schmid.

And there is a lot for Johann Scheerer to observe during the hostage-taking within his own four walls. Two police family support officers are constantly on site and turn the family's living room into a control centre, waiting for calls from the hostage-takers and planning money transfers with the family. To get a feel for the situation at the time, interviews were conducted before filming with officers who were actually involved in the case at the time. The real Johann Scheerer was also involved in the creation of the script in the early days. "When filming a real-life story, you always have a special responsibility towards the real people. You want to do them and the situation justice. The first viewing of the film together with the family was also very emotional - and everyone was happy with the result," says Schmid.

The film celebrates its world premiere at Filmfest Hamburg in the city where the entire plot is set. Much of the filming also took place on the Elbe, more precisely in Nienstedten, a district of Hamburg Altona. Here, the team found the right house for the family, which met all the requirements for filming. Filming was originally scheduled to begin in 2020 - but due to coronavirus, the shoot was ultimately postponed to March 2021, the exact month in which the real kidnapping took place in 1996.

Did everything else go smoothly? "During filming, we had a ten-day filming stop due to coronavirus and had to rush at the end. We couldn't extend the house and had to clear everything out overnight - normally we would have had three days to do this. But we managed it," remembers Hans-Christian Schmid. The film, which will also feature Adina Vetter, Justus von Dohnanyi, Hans Löw and Yorck Dippe alongside Claude Heinrich, has now also been completed and is "ready to take off". First stop: Filmfest Hamburg. And then from 3 November in German cinemas everywhere.