lake constance

Murder by the Lake is a German-Austrian TV crime series that has been produced since 2014 by Rowboat Film- und Fernsehproduktion and Graf Filmproduktion in cooperation with the German television broadcaster ZDF and the Austrian television broadcaster ORF. The series is filmed and set in the adjacent towns of Bregenz, Austria, and Lindau, Germany, which are both located on the southeastern shore of Lake Constance.

Three men want to escape their troubles with women by taking a boat tour on the Rhine river.

Helmut and Sabine Halm have always managed vacations of lazy privacy at their favorite retreat on Germany′s Lake Constance. So when the energetic, handsome Klaus Buch turns up with his beautiful girlfriend Helene, Helmut is quite ready to dismiss this dimly familiar acquaintance. But Klaus is overjoyed to recognize his old schoolmate Helmut, eager to recall every incident of their shared time, and to display every detail of this successful lifestyle as a fit sportsman and author. The precious days of privacy give way to an unwanted and awkward intimacy, as the Buchs and the Halms hike, dine and sail together. Their joint activities aggravate myriad psychological tensions among the four characters, which are all the more intensely ironic for their peaceful veneer and which must eventually erupt.

A filmmaker reconstructs a common memory about the formerly industrialized Lake Constance region, which was also largely built up by migration – and in recent years has mainly attracted people who do not like to pay taxes. The imprints speak, the fog. Without talking heads, in perspectives beyond the memorialized self-image of this region, classism becomes comprehensible.