The Silence (2010 film)
The Silence () is a 2010 German thriller film directed by Baran bo Odar, after the German crime fiction novel The Silence () by Jan Costin Wagner. Plot Summer 1986: Pia, an 11-year-old schoolgirl, is raped and murdered in a wheat field near a small provincial German town by one man while another man watches silently from the passenger seat of his red car. The murderer packs Pia's body into the trunk of the car and leaves her bicycle behind. In 2009, exactly 23 years later, 13-year-old Sinikka Weghamm goes missing from the local fair. Her bicycle is discovered in the same spot where Pia's bike had been found. Senior detective Krischan Mittich, who investigated the original murder, has just retired. The new murder investigation is undertaken by David Jahn, a detective who is still emotionally overwhelmed by the death of his wife five months earlier. Mittich takes an interest in the new case, but he is blocked from participating by the new senior detective, Matthias Grimmer, who insists on doing things his way, even when he is wrong. A flashback shows the initial meeting of Pia's murderer, Danish national Peer Sommer, and his companion, a student named Timo. The men form a bond as Sommer shares his collection of pornographic films, including one that shows the abuse of an adolescent girl, with Timo. Timo leaves after Pia's murder, to Sommer's dismay. Mittich, the retired detective, visits Pia's mother and rails against the false hope that detective Grimmer holds out for Sinikka's parents, who grow increasingly upset at the lack of progress in the investigation. Timo, who has married, taken his wife's last name, and had two children of his own, is now an architect. Upon hearing of the new murder, he leaves home and makes his way back to Sommer. Sommer is glad to see his old friend and says that he had tried unsuccessfully to find Timo after he had left 23 years earlier. Sommer gives Timo a DVD copy of the old film with the girl. Timo leaves Sommer again. He watches the DVD in his hotel room and cries with shame and guilt. He goes to see Pia's mother. His questions about Pia make the mother suspicious, and she tells ex-detective Mittich about him. Timo goes to the police station, presumably to confess, and Jahn notices him in the parking lot about to exit his car, but Timo has second thoughts and leaves. Based on Timo's suspicious questions to Pia's mother, Jahn and Mittich visit Timo's house. He is not home, but the detectives question his wife and then find child pornography on his computer. Jahn meanwhile has gotten the idea of matching the list of red cars in the vicinity of Pia's murder with the list of red cars in the vicinity of an earlier murder. After initially rejecting the idea, Grimmer adopts the idea and sends his subordinates, including pregnant Jana Gläser, but not including Jahn, out to interview the owners of the cars.