Music Box Films has announced and detailed the Blu-ray release of writer/director Baran bo Odar's The Silence, starring Ulrich Thomsen (The Celebration), Sebastian Blomberg (The Baader Meinhof Complex), Katrin Sass (Good Bye, Lenin!) and Burghart Klaussner (The White Ribbon). The critically acclaimed crime thriller arrives on Blu-ray on July 23rd.
Based on the novel of the same name by Jan Costin Wagner, The Silence begins on a hot summer day in 1986 with the brutal murder of a young girl named Pia, killed in a wheat field by Peer (Thomsen) as his helpless friend Timo (Mohring) watches. Twenty-three years later, on the same date, 13-year-old Sinikka goes missing, her bicycle abandoned in the same spot, leading police to suspect the same killer may be at work again. Recently widowed detective David (Blomberg) and his colleague Janna (Jule Boewe) struggle to solve the mystery of these parallel crimes with the help of Krischan (Burghart Klaussner), the retired investigator of the original unresolved case. While Sinikka's distraught parents are trapped in an agonizing period of waiting and uncertainty, their daughter's fate rips open unhealed wounds in the heart of Pia's mother (Sass) and sends Timo in search of Peer and their own suppressed past.
With the critical and commercial success of The Silence around the world, filmmaker Baran bo Odar has emerged as a major new presence on the international film scene. The Swiss-born filmmaker garnered "Directors To Watch" honors for The Silence at the 2011 Palm Springs International Film Festival, and the film itself picked up nominations for Best Film at the Nuremberg Film Festival, the Critics Award by the German Film Critics Association, and the Golden Lady Harimaguada at the Las Palmas Film Festival.
The Blu-ray edition of The Silence features a German-language DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track with English subtitles, as well as several extras:
Two films by Baran bo Odar: Quietsch (7 min) and Under The Sun (60 min)