Blindspot Berlin

Roughly one week before Christmas in 2016, a truck was driven into the popular holiday market at Breitscheidplatz — a major public square, crowded with revellers and holiday shoppers. A dozen people were killed, and many more injured, in what became the deadliest terror attack in Germany in decades. The attacker was a 24-year-old man, not only known to police but who had been under surveillance for nearly 18 months before the attack. In the days and weeks after the tragedy, the shock of the devastation gave way to one major question — how could this have happened?

Based on these real events, Blindspot Berlin imagines the months leading up to the attack. Detective Frank Laudin (Albrecht Schuch, All Quiet on the Western Front, TIFF ’22) has been monitoring worrying activity through his networks of informants and surveillance, assisted by the translation efforts of newly-recruited, Iraqi-born police officer Isra Al-Husseini (Bayan Layla, Elaha). Laudin forms a special unit to investigate further, looking to convince his higher ups the threat is real. He recruits a well-connected informant, Murat Cem (Tamer Tıraşoğlu), who is well connected but inscrutable. When Murat Cem embeds within a particular group of men, his reports become more alarming each day — especially concerning one young man who seems ready to do absolutely anything he’s asked.

A compelling procedural thriller, with the looming spectre of an unfathomable outcome, Blindspot Berlin is unflinching. Concerned with questions of state power, surveillance, radicalization, political accountability, and personal cost, this series asks what it is that we fail to see, and why.

GEOFF MACNAUGHTON

Content advisory: coarse language, mature themes, violence