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Mathias Mund is married with two children. He is a man who loves his family and has no doubts whatsoever about the meaning of existence. He knows what is just and what is unjust, he understands the meaning of RIGHT and WRONG. Each day he asserts with absolute clarity and precision that "we have control over our lives", insisting that "everything that happens to us is governed by the rules of responsibility." It takes exactly one second to shatter everything he believes in.
Mathias Mund is a State Prosecutor, and one day on the way to a trial he runs over an 11-year-old boy. The child is killed immediately. Mathias is not at all to blame for the accident - but now something happens to him that he has never accepted in court when defendants try to explain their actions. He loses control, he is "no longer himself" and he races off in shock. As he drives around in a daze the memory of the horrific accident returns to haunt him. In despair, only half aware of what he is doing, he deliberately causes a second accident to explain the damage to his car and conceal his involvement in the first. Now his life has become a nightmare, and it appears to gain momentum of its own. That evening Heinrich Kranz, a colleague of Mathias's who has long been a secret admirer of his wife, tells him that the mother of the boy he ran over, a Russian-German single parent, is quite likely to commit suicide. It is a routine comment based on entirely logical considerations, but it is enough to drive Mathias to desperate action. He resolves to fight against fate - to meet the woman whose son he killed and give her the courage to go on living. Though Katharina is naturally hesitant and suspicious at first, gradually she responds to his attention, and a friendship develops between them. Mathias wanted to rescue her, and he seems to have succeeded.
Back at home he attempts to tell his wife the whole story, but in the meantime she has become so fascinated by the friendly attention Heinrich Kranz pays her that Mathias has no opportunity to confess. He is forced to remain silent. While the police and a private detective hired by Katharina are looking for the hit-and-run driver, Katharina confesses to Mathias that without him she would have killed herself long ago. But here again Mathias can do nothing except remain silent...
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Remark