Cold Files is a surreal German crime mystery set in the early 2000s.
Johann Stolz, a disgraced 50-year-old former detective, returns to the police force as a nobody in the archives. His job is to read unsolved cold cases and file them away. Until every file becomes a door. Johann has to go to the actual crime scene, and once he steps onto the location, the world shifts. Like an invisible spirit, he sees the murder with brutal clarity. Time rewinds around him. Footsteps. Voices. The killer’s route. The victim’s final moments. It all plays out in front of his eyes.
The first presence to find him is Lydia Finkel, a rape and murder victim who becomes his guide. She pulls Johann toward scenes no one wants reopened, showing him details that never made it into reports. Johann has to turn what he witnessed into real evidence before anyone labels him unstable. Case by case, he exposes killers the system missed, until a pattern points back to a legend from the East Germany era under Soviet control. A faceless murderer known as Der Gesichtlose.
When Johann reaches Lydia’s file, he returns to her crime scene and relives everything. And there, in the sharpest vision of all, he learns the truth. The man he’s been hunting is the one who killed her. Now Johann isn’t sorting old failures. He’s being pulled straight toward the most dangerous case of his life.
