Streaming: “Tower Shadow”: Series without black and white painting

If a Holocaust survivor brutally executes violent neo-Nazis – which side are you on as a spectator? The series “Tower Shadow”, which will be shown on Sky Atlantic and the streaming provider Wow from this Friday (November 15th), confronts its audience with complicated questions and a complex reality.

The series, which is based on the debut novel of the same name by Munich author Peter Grandl, tells the story of Holocaust survivor and former Mossad agent Ephraim Zamir (Heiner Lauterbach), who lives in an old defensive tower with his future adopted daughter, Esther built a family life in the country that caused him such unspeakable suffering as a child.

Lauterbach plays a concentration camp survivor

As a child, Zamir was deported to a concentration camp with his twin brother, separated from his mother – and handed over to concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele for his twin experiments. He survived – unlike his brother.

Decades later, fate strikes again in the form of unleashed right-wing extremism, when foster daughter Esther is murdered in her home by neo-Nazis – henchmen of an unscrupulous and power-mad boss of an up-and-coming right-wing party – and Zamir loses his family a second time lost by the National Socialists.

The Internet community decides about life and death

He finds two suspected perpetrators at the crime scene, takes them hostage and comes up with a plan: He wants to let the Internet community decide on the life and death of the two Nazis in an online vote. Do they deserve to stay alive? Or should they be executed?

So that the audience can decide, Zamir engages in chamber play-like scenes with his two opponents and especially with the eloquent Karl Rieger (strong: Klaus Steinbacher). A tribunal in front of a live audience that is broadcast around the clock thanks to a ratings-hungry private broadcaster and its program director Carla Kleinfeld (Désirée Nosbusch).

But Kleinfeld has a completely different goal: She wants to unmask the unscrupulous party leader who is pulling the strings in the background of the neo-Nazi association – even if her boss is afraid that he could cause trouble for the station with his political influence.

The series, which premiered at the Munich Film Festival, shows the shockingly current scenario of an emerging right-wing party and takes a look into the darkness of a world in which young men dream of fascism. “Tower Shadow” consistently refuses to give easy answers. Who is the bad guy in the story? The Nazi who was taught conspiracy theories by his grandfather that have stuck with him even as an adult? Or the Holocaust survivor who seeks revenge – and may have made terrible mistakes and met the wrong person?

“The most important message of the series is that people are not just black and white,” says producer Thomas Peter Friedl, “people will always come together where there is a mixture of different shades of gray.”