Gladbeck: Das Geiseldrama (2022)
Genre: Documentary / Crime
Duration: 91 minuten
Alternative title: Gladbeck: The Hostage Crisis
Country:
Germany
Directed by: Volker Heise
Starst: Hans-Jürgen Rösner, Dieter Degowski and Marion Löblich
IMDb score:
7,5 (3.212)
Releasedate: 8 June 2022
Gladbeck: Das Geiseldrama plot
On August 16, 1988, Dieter Degowski and Hans-Jürgen Rösner arrived at a Deutsche Bank office in Gladbeck. The visit turned into a robbery and the two gunmen took several people hostage. For more than two days they managed to keep the German police at a distance by fleeing in a hijacked regular bus. The hostage drama was followed live and ended bloody. The media spectacle also sparked a debate about journalistic ethics. In this documentary, the dark period is brought back to life using an enormous amount of archival material.
Reviews & comments
Fisico (moderator films)
-
- 10009 messages
- 5398 votes
Pretty disconcerting documentary about the hostage-taking in Germany in 1988. I was still a bit too young to take anything from it, but I found what I saw striking. Unbelievable how the German press at the time gained access to a crime scene and could casually conduct interviews and conversations with the hostage takers. Like it was a show. It was vultures who cared only about the scoop. Posing, handing out cigarettes, getting on the bus, it was all possible ... And the police? I didn't see them, but they were probably working behind the scenes.
It was nice that the entire documentary consisted of archive footage. The installation was therefore clever. I didn't know how it ended and therefore found it exciting from start to finish.
Translated from Dutch · View original
N00dles
-
- 599 messages
- 2276 votes
Terrible event. Funnily enough, I had never heard of this hostage drama before so I was very curious about the denouement, assuming the worst, but hoping the hostages would come out relatively unscathed.
Unfortunately, the denouement was a drama and it turned out that the 18-year-old Silke Bischoff had been killed in the firefight, and the other hostage-taker badly injured, not to mention the 15-year-old boy who was killed on the bus because he protected his sister (partly due to a misjudgment by the police).
That both perpetrators were arrested alive and that that monster named Dieter Degowski was released even in 2018 because of 'good behavior' (which I think is a backward arrangement anyway) is shocking.
How the press and public interfered in the situation is unimaginable today, and the apparently relaxed atmosphere (as well as the co-negotiation and even riding as a hostage) is strange to say the least. Disaster tourism is something of all times, but in this case there was a firearms-dangerous situation. That mindless disaster tourists then stood there and looked a bit laughing as if they were in a real-life movie is completely idiotic.
I found the documentary itself, although compelling, sometimes a bit messy in terms of editing. It's good that (unlike talking heads docs) almost 100% news footage has been used, so you really feel like it's live, but that made some developments a bit confusing.
For example, the press moments at the bus were spent quite a while, but there is hardly any picture of the denouement, let alone an oral report. As a result, as a viewer, I was left with questions; how did the police approach them, how did the firefight go and why were the perpetrators arrested alive while they previously indicated that they wanted to take their own life?
3.5*
Translated from Dutch · View original
Corporate & Media
Realtimes Network
Innovatieweg 20C
7007 CD, Doetinchem, Netherlands
+31(315)-764002
Realtimes Network
- Sign up |
- Contact Us |
- About Us |
- Advertise |
- Privacy |
- Disclaimer |
- RSS Feed
© 2025 MovieMeter B.V.