''A Day for a Miracle'' (german: Das Wunder von Kärnten, ) is a 2011 film directed by Andreas Prochaska in 2011 and produced by Rowboat Film- und Fernsehproduktion and Graf Film for public German TV channel
ZDF
ZDF (, short for Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen; ; "Second German Television") is a German public-service television broadcaster based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. It is run as an independent nonprofit institution, which was founded by all fe ...
and Austrian
ORF
ORF or Orf may refer to:
* Norfolk International Airport, IATA airport code ORF
* Observer Research Foundation, an Indian research institute
* One Race Films, a film production company founded by Vin Diesel
* Open reading frame, a portion of the ...
. The film is based on real events, telling the story of a three-year-old girl from Austria, who fell into the lake behind her parents' house in 1998, and had been under water for 30 minutes when she was found. Nobody believed she had a chance at survival when the young cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Markus Thalmann takes up the seemingly hopeless fight for the young girl's life. His rescue has written medical history. The screenplay was written by
Christoph Silber
Christoph Silber (often credited as Chris Silber), born 26 April 1971 in Berlin, is a German-American author and filmmaker. Rated among "Europe's hottest new screenwriters" by ''Screen International'', Silber works and lives in the United States ...
and Thorsten Wettcke.
The film premiered at the 2011
Filmfest Hamburg
FILMFEST HAMBURG is an international film festival in Hamburg, the third-largest of its kind in Germany (after Berlin and Munich). It shows national and international feature and documentary films in eleven sections. The range of the program stret ...
, and later showed in television in Germany and Austria.
Plot
Dr. Markus Höchstmann, a young and ambitious cardiovascular surgeon and
ultra marathon
An ultramarathon, also called ultra distance or ultra running, is any footrace longer than the traditional marathon length of . Various distances are raced competitively, from the shortest common ultramarathon of to over . 50k and 100k are bot ...
runner from
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
, has landed his first job in a clinic in
Klagenfurt
Klagenfurt am WörtherseeLandesgesetzblatt 2008 vom 16. Jänner 2008, Stück 1, Nr. 1: ''Gesetz vom 25. Oktober 2007, mit dem die Kärntner Landesverfassung und das Klagenfurter Stadtrecht 1998 geändert werden.'/ref> (; ; sl, Celovec), usually ...
, province of
Carinthia
Carinthia (german: Kärnten ; sl, Koroška ) is the southernmost States of Austria, Austrian state, in the Eastern Alps, and is noted for its mountains and lakes. The main language is German language, German. Its regional dialects belong to t ...
. As his wife and son are still living in Vienna, he needs to commute to the capital every chance he gets to see them. His colleagues have little sympathy for him when he is asked to fill in for the chief of surgery on the weekend of his son's birthday to perform a standard procedure on an important local politician.
This is when an emergency is flown in: a four-year-old girl has drowned, her body is lifeless and cold, her heart is not beating. After 30 minutes under water, the damage to her brain is considered too extensive to try to resuscitate her. Höchstmann disagrees. Against the opinions of his more experienced colleagues and against all odds, he decides to fight for the little girl's life and performs a medical miracle.
Awards
Wins
*
International Emmy
The International Emmy Awards, or International Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the television industry. Bestowed by the New York–based International Academy of Television Arts and Sc ...
Award 2013, in the category: TV Movie/Mini-Series.
* The film won two Austrian TV awards
Romy
Romy is a given name, often a diminutive form of names such as Rosemary (given name), Rosemary or Roman (given name), Roman or Romeo (given name), Romeo. https://nameberry.com/babyname/romy/boy
People with the name include:
Men
*Romy Cachola, n ...
in 2012, for "Best TV screenplay" (by
Christoph Silber
Christoph Silber (often credited as Chris Silber), born 26 April 1971 in Berlin, is a German-American author and filmmaker. Rated among "Europe's hottest new screenwriters" by ''Screen International'', Silber works and lives in the United States ...
and Thorsten Wettcke) and "Best TV Producer" (Sam Davis, Rowboat and co-producer Klaus Graf of Graf Film, Austria)
* Director Andreas Prochaska won the
Bavarian TV Award
Bayerischer Fernsehpreis (the Bavarian TV award) is an award presented by the government of Bavaria, Germany since 1989. The prize symbol is the "Blue Panther", a figure from the Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory. The prize money is €10,000 (Spec ...
for "Best Directing TV Movie" in 2012.
* Gerti Drassl won the German Actors Award 2013 (Deutscher Schauspielerpreis) in the category "Best Actress in a Supporting Role"
* Günter-Rohrbach-Filmpreis 2012 for supporting actors Gerti Drassl and Gerhard Liebmann
Nominations
* Nominated for
Prix Europa {{notability, Events, date=March 2021
PRIX EUROPA – The European Broadcasting Festival – is the Europe's largest annual tri-medial festival and competition. The event takes place in the third week of October in Berlin, Germany.
PRIX E ...