Tatort “In the Family” Part 1: Greetings from Calabria

The Calabrian mountain village is bathed in the bright red evening sun. If you dine in the trattoria of the small German-Calabrian family Modica, you will see this mountain village in the form of a huge photographic wallpaper. Less picturesque around the restaurant, it is located on the outskirts of Dortmund, between roads leading to motorways that can be used to quickly reach the Benelux countries or Berlin. Gray suburb of Ruhrpott. Calabria seems far away.

Once a month an Italian truck brings canned tomatoes from home and part of the load is usually reloaded immediately. As it turns out, people in Belgium and Berlin also love Calabrian tomatoes. Or what is still carried in the cans. When the next load is unloaded, a stenz with a dragon headdress comes out from behind the pallets of cans, which from now on should cook at the Modicas. There were probably problems at home.

The young Calabrian (Emiliano De Martino), despite his irascible character, is nicknamed only “Pippo” by everyone, and confuses the small world of the restaurateur family. He tries to drag the man (Beniamino Brogi) to the monetary protection shops; leads the woman (Antje Traue) into the arms of the police, who promises her a leniency program if she testifies against her husband’s friends.

Which family is more powerful? The small Italian-German mother-father-son unit or the Calabrian clan? Sure, a rhetorical question. The situation worsens, loyalties are negotiated until the last consequences. Soon the photo wallpaper seems to catch fire with the blood red dawn. Calabria is close.

This “crime scene” is the first part of a double episode of Dortmund and Munich with which ARD celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the series. It concerns the activities of the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian octopus-like mafia, in Germany. Both sides are scripted by Bernd Lange (»Das Disappearance«), but they were staged in different tones and perspectives by two different directors (read here the big double interview on the anniversary »crime scene«).

Part of the global logistics of the ‘Ndrangheta

The first part of “In der Familie” was written by Dominik Graf, who approaches the material from the margins of crime: from the rustic restaurant in Modicas that the small family was able to set up with a little financial support from Italian uncles and where now serves spaghetti carbonara for six euros. The lower German middle class, so to speak, but that is an important part of the overall logistics of the ‘Ndrangheta.

Director Graf, who ten years ago shot a masterful series on the Russian mafia in Berlin with “In the Face of the Crime”, does without mafia exaggeration. Here no sponsor makes offers that cannot be refused, here no one kisses his hand; On the contrary, a rather anonymous and archaic field of activity is put into the picture, in which powers and dependencies are subliminal but sustainable.

44 billion euros in annual turnover

Nothing about clan crime in this “crime scene” is fascinating. Especially not the police officers who fight them. Investigators positioned themselves in a robbed RV to trace the transactions behind canned tomatoes. Soon the team around Dortmund inspectors Faber and Bönisch (Jörg Hartmann and Anna Schudt) will unleash on three or four square meters with that of Munich inspectors Batic and Leitmayr (Miroslav Nemec and Udo Wachtveitl), also on the ‘Ndrangheta.

Too much effort for a delinquent like Pippo, who immediately after his arrival distributes greetings from Calabria with a baseball bat to found a small protection company on his own? Not at all. Writer Lange and director Graf make it clear how the squalid outposts of the ‘Ndrangheta are linked to its international empire. There is talk of 44 billion euros in annual turnover achieved by the Calabrian mafia.