Four young friends who call themselves the Peppercorns are pulled into a real conspiracy in this 2021 German adventure from director Christian Theede.

What is The Peppercorns And The Secret Of The Deep Sea about?

When Tarun's mother Jaswinder announces she has found a way to replace plastic with something safer for the ocean, she becomes a target overnight. Attackers seize her research, the documents vanish along with any proof of her breakthrough, and then Jaswinder herself disappears. Alice, the last Peppercorn still free to act, refuses to let the case go cold. Her search for clues leads straight to a toxic waste operation with every reason to keep Jaswinder's findings buried for good, and no patience for a teenager asking questions. The deeper Alice digs, the clearer it becomes that whoever is behind this will go to serious lengths to stop the truth from surfacing, and that her friends may be the only backup she has left.

About the cast

Caspar Fischer Ortman and Leander Pütz lead the young cast alongside Emilia Flint, Charlotte Martz, Linda Madita and Meriam Abbas, with Badasar Colbiyik and Max Riemelt rounding out the ensemble. The group plays off each other with the easy familiarity of kids who have clearly done this before, which is exactly what a story like this needs to work.

Context & significance

Theede works in a well-worn but reliable register here: junior detectives, adult villains who underestimate them, and a plot that treats environmental crime as something worth taking seriously rather than as scenery. The Adventure and Family tags fit the film squarely, and its German setting gives the mystery a specific, unglamorous backdrop of shipping yards and waste sites rather than a generic anywhere, which helps the stakes feel grounded even when the plot turns melodramatic.

Watching The Peppercorns And The Secret Of The Deep Sea on Ktime

The film streams on K-Time with a Persian dub, so younger viewers can follow every twist of Alice's investigation without needing the German dialogue. As with everything on the platform, you just need a K-Time account login to start watching, part of a Farsi-first experience built for Persian-speaking families rather than a maze of add-ons.