Bremen, 1828. A port city, a string of unexplained deaths, and a woman working in a legal office who is not supposed to be asking questions. Effigy: Poison and the City turns a historical investigation into a study of who gets to be believed.
What is Effigy: Poison and the City about?
In the German port of Bremen, a young woman has taken a position as a law clerk, an unusual place for her to be at a time when the courts and their paperwork belonged almost entirely to men. When a series of poisonings begins to unsettle the city, she finds herself close to an investigation that the officials around her would prefer to handle without her. Determined to prove her worth, she starts following the details others overlook, and the case draws her deeper into the households, habits and quiet cruelties of a respectable town. The film builds its tension not through chases but through documents, interviews and the slow accumulation of suspicion, as the clerk's competence becomes harder for her superiors to ignore. Running a compact 85 minutes, it stays close to its period and its people, treating the question of how a city could fail to notice deaths in its midst as seriously as the identity of whoever is behind them.
About the cast
Suzan Anbeh and Elisa Thiemann lead the ensemble, with Christoph Gottschalch, Roland Jankowsky, Uwe Bohm, Marc Ottiker, Marita Marschall and Lea Wolfram completing the cast. The performances stay measured and formal, matching a story in which restraint and social standing are as much part of the drama as the crimes themselves.
Context & significance
Directed by Udo Flohr, Effigy: Poison and the City is a German and American co-production released in 2021, filed under crime and historical drama. Its setting of 1828 Bremen places it in a period when proving poisoning depended on observation, testimony and persistence far more than on laboratory work. The film was well received, and its interest in a woman finding her footing inside an institution that has no place for her gives the period piece a distinctly contemporary edge.
Watching Effigy: Poison and the City on Ktime
Effigy: Poison and the City is available on K-Time with a Persian dub as well as Persian subtitles, so its period dialogue can be followed in Farsi or in the original audio with translated text. This page is open to everyone; streaming the film requires logging in to a K-Time account. K-Time's Farsi-first interface makes browsing and playback straightforward for Persian-speaking viewers wherever they live.