General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

A Day for a Miracle

A Day for a Miracle (German: Das Wunder von Kärnten) is a 2011 German-Austrian television drama film directed by Andreas Prochaska, based on the true story of an Austrian doctor who saved a clinically dead four-year-old girl pulled from an icy pond.¹^•² The 90-minute film stars Ken Duken as the young cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Markus Höchstmann and won the International Emmy Award for best TV movie in 2013.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Das Wunder von Kärnten; international title A Day for a Miracle¹
Format	Drama, TV movie, 90 minutes, in German³^•⁵
Director and writers	Directed by Andreas Prochaska; written by Christoph Silber and Thorsten Wettcke⁶
Production	Rowboat Film- und Fernsehproduktion in co-production with Graf Filmproduktion, ZDF and ORF, in association with Beta⁷
Broadcast premieres	ORF on 18 January 2012; ZDF on 5 March 2012⁶
Leading cast	Ken Duken (Dr. Markus Höchstmann), Julia Koschitz (Dr. Lydia Martischek), Gerti Drassl, Erwin Steinhauer, Jürgen Maurer³
Highest honor	International Emmy Award 2013, TV Movie/Mini-Series⁶

Spoilers

Story

The film follows Dr. Markus Höchstmann, a young and ambitious cardiovascular surgeon and ultra marathon runner from Vienna who has taken his first job at a clinic in Klagenfurt, in the Austrian province of Kärnten (Carinthia). Because his family stayed in Vienna and he commutes back whenever he can, his colleagues regard him as an arrogant city slicker.⁶

On a weekend when Markus must fill in for the senior physician and operate on an important local politician, an emergency arrives: a drowned four-year-old girl, lifeless and cold, her heart stopped. She has spent 30 minutes underwater, too long for her brain to survive without damage, and her body temperature on arrival at the hospital is 18.4 °C; she is clinically dead. The consensus of the emergency unit is not to attempt resuscitation, but Markus disagrees.⁶^•⁷

With the Chief of Surgery away, Markus faces the decision of whether to operate, although he has never operated on a child before. His more experienced colleagues urge him to give up, since comparable attempts have always ended in failure, and even survival could leave the girl in a vegetative state. He greenlights the operation anyway, contending with complications with the girl's lungs, a lack of suitable equipment that forces his team to gather material and build makeshift instruments, and the irate politician demanding his pacemaker implant.⁷

True-story basis

The film is based on a real event: in 1998 the Austrian doctor Markus Thalmann saved a little girl's life in an operation that lasted 15 hours.² Beta Film's sales material describes the film as telling "the true story of the unparalleled and successful battle of a young doctor to save the life of a clinically dead little girl, who lay nearly 30 minutes in an ice-cold pond."⁸

Screenwriter Christoph Silber, an adjunct film and television professor at La Sierra University, described the story's central question as "how far can we interfere with life, do miracles exist, or can we, through our own resilience for hope, make something miraculous happen by not letting go," adding that the film leaves the answer to the viewer.⁹

Release

The production company Rowboat lists the broadcast premiere on ORF as 18 January 2012 and on ZDF as 5 March 2012.⁶ Database listings also give a release date of 5 October 2011, which Filmweb identifies as the world premiere.³^•¹ The film was shot in Carinthia, Austria.¹

Reception and awards

The film won the International Emmy Award 2013 in the TV Movie/Mini-Series category, with the award going to producer Sam Davis at the 41st International Emmy Awards in New York on 25 November 2013; director Andreas Prochaska was nominated in the same category.⁶^•¹⁰

Its other honors include:⁶

Romy 2012 wins for Best Producer TV (Klaus Graf and Sam Davis) and Best Book TV-Film (Christoph Silber and Thorsten Wettcke)
Bavarian Television Award 2012 for Director (Andreas Prochaska)
Günter Rohrbach Film Award 2012 for Gerhard Liebmann and Gerti Drassl
German Actor Award 2013 (BFFS) for Best Supporting Actress (Gerti Drassl)
Nominations at the Grimme Award 2013, Prix Europa 2012, and the Television Film Festival Baden-Baden 2012

Audience ratings on aggregator sites have been favorable: Plex lists a rating of 7.1 out of 10.³ According to a La Sierra University release, numerous physicians and nurses wrote letters thanking the creators for making a movie that accurately depicts the world in which they work; Silber said he had never had responses like this to a film.⁹

Place in Prochaska's career

The film marked the start of a collaboration between Beta and director Andreas Prochaska that continued with the feature film The Dark Valley (2013) and the historical trilogy Maximilian and Marie de Bourgogne (2017).¹¹ Prochaska, born in 1964 in Vienna, had earlier directed the box-office successes Dead in 3 Days (2006) and The Unintentional Kidnapping of Elfriede Ott (2010), and the Bavarian TV Award for Best Directing for A Day for a Miracle preceded his Bavarian Film Award for The Dark Valley.¹²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Television films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?