In an ntv interview, the team behind the six-part series Breitscheidplatz 19/12 said an attack like the one on the Berlin Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz almost ten years ago is possible. Producer Simon Amberger, director and co-author David Nawrath, and lead actors Albrecht Schuch, Bayan Layla and Tamer Trasoglu spoke to Sabine Oelmann.
The 19 December 2016 attack is described as one of the most serious terrorist attacks in the history of the Federal Republic. Nawrath condenses researched events, with some fictional elements and characters, into a picture of multiple failures by the state. Despite a three-year Bundestag investigative committee, most of its documents remain sealed, and painful questions from the injured, the bereaved and the public are still unanswered ten years later.
The series is set in 2015, as the Islamic State recruited fighters in the Syrian civil war. A North Rhine-Westphalia state-protection officer tries to reach a hate preacher and places a former criminal as an informant in that milieu. The informant meets Anis Amri, whom he takes for the type of a future attacker, while a young officer follows the tips and a federal police expert treats Amri as a minor figure. As France is shaken by the Bataclan attack, the officer expects an attack in Germany. Caught between powers and rivalries, Amri slips through the net, and on 19 December he sets off in a truck for an Islamist attack in Berlin with no one stopping him. Layla said her own officer character is entirely invented.
Amberger said the team never claimed to tell the truth and that this was not possible. Research repeatedly ran aground and much remains vague. He said they wanted to show, before the tenth anniversary, the narrow line on which police and federal officials often move: people reach their limits because rules, missing answers and Germany's federal system stop the work, often for good reason. He said the obvious wrong decisions were often banal, built into the system and sometimes understandable in the individual case, which does not make them less tragic.
Nawrath, who was in Berlin at the time, called the project extremely research-based. He recalled a diffuse picture after the attack, many inconsistencies, and authorities who knew more than they told the public. He said he and co-author David Marian do not know whether that came from vanity or carelessness. What they do know is that the information contained many contradictions, alongside conspiracy theories and a seemingly endless inquiry. Working through it, they gradually saw the mistakes and missed chances, and felt a frustration like that of investigators faced with rigid bureaucracy, while also seeing why institutions must follow those procedures.
Before the Hamburg premiere, all episodes were screened in advance for the association of the bereaved, with which the team had stayed in contact. Amberger called it extremely emotional, as the account took people back to that time. He said they were nevertheless glad that this contemporary document now exists, even though it can never tell every facet. He expects some viewers to argue that sending people home would remove the problem, and said the team tried to tell the story as carefully as possible. At the Hamburg film festival, Nawrath said he was surprised by how moved relatives were to see fictional investigators deal with frustration over the lack of official transparency.