''Luna'' (also titled ''Luna's Revenge'' and ''Runaway'') is a 2017 German thriller film, directed by Khaled Kaissar, and starring

Lisa Vicari Lisa Vicari (born 11 February 1997) is a German actress. She is known for portraying Martha Nielsen in the Netflix series ''Dark (TV series), Dark'' and the lead role of Isi in the Netflix original film ''Isi & Ossi''. Biography Vicari was born ...

Carlo Ljubek Carlo Ljubek (born May 21, 1976 in Bocholt, North Rhine-Westphalia) is a German actor. Life Carlo Ljubek was born as a son of Croatian migrants in Bocholt, Germany. He graduated after his actor's training 2002 in Munich, Germany at the Otto- ...

, and

Branko Tomović Branko Tomović ( sr, italic=yes, Бранко Томовић; born June 17, 1980) is a German-Serbian actor and filmmaker. Career He was born in Münster, Germany, though his actual origin is from the Carpathians in Serbia. His parents emigra ...

Plot

Luna (Lisa Vicari) is an intelligent and carefree teenager who is spending the summer with her family in the mountains. Suddenly, her entire family is killed by foreign agents, and Luna just barely manages to escape. She is forced to confront the fact that her whole life has been a lie: her father Jakob (Benjamin Sadler) was a Russian agent living in Germany for 20 years, while her family was just the cover. When he was finally exposed by the BND, she found herself in the crosshairs of the Russian secret service. Luna teams up with the secretive agent Hamid (Carlo Ljubek) in order to find justice for her family. Eventually she exposes Victor (Branko Tomovic) as the murderer, and several arrests are made.

Production

"Luna" was filmed in late 2015 in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

, Dachau and

Oberstdorf Oberstdorf ( Low Alemannic: ''Oberschdorf'') is a municipality and skiing and hiking town in Germany, located in the Allgäu region of the Bavarian Alps. It is the southernmost settlement in Germany and one of its highest towns. At the&nb ...

. Lisa Vicari performed her own stunts, including hanging on a rope at a height of 60 to 70 meters above a gorge. It is Kaissar film production, in co-production with Rat Pack and Berghaus Wöbke. The executive producer is Tobias M. Huber. The screenplay was written by Ulrike Schölles and Ali Zojaji, and the cinematography was directed by Namche Okon. It is based on a true story.

Cast

as Luna *

as Hamid *

Branko Tomovic Branko (Cyrillic script: Бранко; ) is a South Slavic male given name found in all of the former Yugoslavia. It is related to the names Branimir and Branislav, and the female equivalent is Branka. People named Branko include: * Branko Babi ...

as Victor *

Benjamin Sadler Benjamin Sadler (born Benjamin Klimaschewski; 12 February 1971) is a German actor. Biography Sadler was born in Toronto, Canada, the son of a German graphic designer and a British teacher. He lived in Canada until he was five. In 1976 he move ...

as Jakob *

Rainer Bock Rainer may refer to: People * Rainer (surname) * Rainer (given name) Other * Rainer Island, an island in Franz Josef Land, Russia * 16802 Rainer, an asteroid * Rainer Foundation, British charitable organisation See also * Rainier (disambiguation ...

as Behringer * Genija Rykova as Kathrin *

Bibiana Beglau Bibiana Beglau (born 16 July 1971) is a German actress. Life Born in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, Bibiana Beglau is the daughter of a border guard and a nurse. After training as an actor at the University of Music and Theatre in Hamburg, she wor ...

as Julia * Laura Graser as Leni * Tamara Graser as Leni * Johannes Meier as Ludger *

Eugen Knecht Eugen is a masculine given name which may refer to: * Archduke Eugen of Austria (1863–1954), last Habsburg Grandmaster of the Teutonic Order from 1894 to 1923 * Prince Eugen, Duke of Närke (1865–1947), Swedish painter, art collector, and pat ...

as Andrej * Roland von Kummant as a hacker * Moritz Fischer as Piotr * Katharina Stark as Charlie

Release and reception

''Luna'' was premiered on June 29, 2017 at the

Munich Film Festival Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

. It received wide release at German cinemas on February 15, 2018. At the 2018 International Police Film Festival in

Liège Liège ( , , ; wa, Lîdje ; nl, Luik ; german: Lüttich ) is a major city and municipality of Wallonia and the capital of the Belgian province of Liège. The city is situated in the valley of the Meuse, in the east of Belgium, not far from b ...

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

, it won the Young Jury Award. The film received generally good reviews. Benjamin Wirtz from Filmaffe believes that the Germans can do genre cinema and Luna proves "to a large extent". Although the film is "not a perfect thriller", it is "one of the better genre films that have been created in Germany recently", which is lacking in the country anyway. The fact that the thriller offers "quite successful entertainment" is "mainly thanks to leading actress Lisa Vicari ..who can carry the story without difficulty". Timo Wolters of Blu-Ray-Rezensions.net writes: “In any case, in his directorial debut, Khaled Kaiser delivers an absolutely thrilling thriller with an agent touch, the opening of which at a hut in the forest for German productions is groundbreakingly hard and straight to the point. ..This is not far from Hollywood level and is at least at the level of Scandinavian thrillers." Oliver Armknecht from film-rezensionen.de was more critical, opining that the few "points of light" were "obscured by a thriller that doesn't manage to develop its own identity" and gave it 4 out of 10 points.

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, 5089068 2017 films 2010s spy thriller films German spy thriller films 2010s German-language films 2010s German films