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“Blindspot Berlin,” a buzzy counter-terror police unit thriller led by “All Quiet on the Western Front” star Albrecht Schuch has been licensed by Beta Film to Spain’s upscale SVOD platform Filmin.
Backed by Germany’s
ARD, Europe’s biggest public broadcaster as well as rbb, NDR, and HR, “Blindspot Berlin’s” Spanish deal was announced Friday on the eve of the six-part series screening in main competition at Cadiz’s South International Series Festival.
The news comes as “Blindspot Berlin” launches Oct. 30 on ARD’s streaming service, with linear broadcasts on Nov. 1 and Nov. 6. The series will be made available on Filmin in early 2027.
A true crime thriller, the heavily researched “Blindspot Berlin” charts German police efforts to prevent Berlin’s Dec. 19 2016 Christmas market terror attack which killed 13 and injured dozens.
A standout world premiere at TIFF Primetime, where it was one of only two European series to make its cut, it turns on Detective Lieutenant Frank Laudlin (Schuch) and Iraq-born rookie police officer Isra Al-Husseini (Bayan Layla, “Elaha”), based out of Düsseldorf State’s Criminal Police H.Q., who race at first to dismantle ISIS recruiting young Germans.
Planting an informant, Murat Cem (Tamer Tıraşoğlu, “Unfamiliar,” “Manta Manta”), their concern soon turns, however, to a threatened terror outrage on German soil, inspired by 2015’s Paris attacks. Yet as Laudlin’s task force closes in on a key suspect, its efforts are undermined by the very German institutions meant to support them.
Schuch is well known for his performances in “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “Bad Banks,” “Berlin Alexanderplatz” and “System Crasher.” Layla was selected this year as one of this year’s German Films Face to Face talents.
The ensemble cast also includes Wael Alkhatib (“Sun and Concrete”), Jeanne Goursaud, star of “Exterritorial” and “Barbarians”), Bernd Hölscher (“The Captain,”) and Sina Martens (“From Hilde, with Love”).
Tense from the get-go thriller, fuelled by an atmospheric electronic score and co-created, co-written and directed by David Nawrath (“Your Honor,” “Atlas”), “Blindspot Berlin” is produced by Neuesuper (“8 Days”), one of Germany’s most ambitious production houses.
Much of the series is set in claustrophobic corridors, backrooms and basements, endowing it with the sense of a labyrinth that its anti-terror agents have to navigate.
It also adopts the multiple POVs of Laudlin, Al-Husseini and Cem, meaning viewers are often one step ahead of Maudlin and certainly German top-flight security officials who deam their prime suspect an ”improbable threat” and pull his monitoring.
“Blindspot Berlin” records all the decisions made before the tragic event and the “systemic failures and human errors that led to this catastrophe,” Nawrath told Variety.
“So many things went wrong. There were so many crazy situations we didn’t have time to show them,” added co-writer David Marian.
“From the moment we watched the first episodes, we had no hesitation in acquiring the series for Filmin. It is an outstanding example of how to craft a thriller based on true events while remaining entirely faithful to the real story, said Jaume Ripoll, co-founder and CCO of Filmin.
He added: “Its technical excellence, exceptional performances, and direction that revives the very best of the European thriller tradition make ‘Blindspot Berlin’ one of Filmin’s flagship series for the first quarter of 2027.”
“‘Blindspot Berlin’ turns a chapter of recent German history into a gripping, character-driven thriller with universal appeal. Its combination of true-crime urgency, outstanding performances, and a story about the consequences of institutional failure makes it a powerful proposition for international audiences,” said Christian Gockel, Beta Film EVP international operations Spain and Portugal.
“Filmin recognized that potential. We are proud that ‘Blindspot Berlin’ already premiered at TIFF and Hamburg, and will now celebrate its Spanish premiere at the South International Series Festival in Cádiz. We are confident that the series will continue to engage audiences around the world,” Glockel continued.
Beta Film is a producer/distributor of many of the continent’s biggest titles such as “Babylon Berlin,” “Gomorrah,” “Borgia,” “Sisi” and evergreen “Rex.”
Founded in 2007, Filmin has grown to one of the highest-profile Spanish SVOD services, acquiring select upscale series and independent and auteur films, as it has begun to produce its own original series, such as Serielizados-selected “Segunda Temporada” as well as acquiring the distribution business of top Spanish arthouse/crossover producer-distributor Elastica Films.
