Das perfekte Geheimnis

Das perfekte Geheimnis ("The Perfect Secret") is a 2019 German comedy-drama directed and written by Bora Dagtekin, in which seven friends at a dinner party agree to place their smartphones on the table and share every incoming call and message aloud, exposing secrets that strain their friendships and relationships. It is a German-language adaptation of the Italian hit Perfetti sconosciuti (2016) by Paolo Genovese, and it drew more than five million cinema admissions in Germany, making it the most-attended German film of 2019.^{1 • 2}

Production and background

Bora Dagtekin, born in 1978 in Hannover to a German mother and a Turkish father, studied screenwriting at the Filmakademie Ludwigsburg and became known as a writer for the ARD series Türkisch für Anfänger before directing the Fack ju Göhte trilogy. After that trilogy, he and producer Lena Schömann developed the Italian film's premise as a contemporary interpretation for German audiences.^{8 • 3}

Filming ran from 18 January to 28 March 2019 at the Bavaria Film Studios in Munich and its surroundings. The film was supported by the Filmförderungsanstalt, the Deutscher Filmförderfonds, FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg.² Reported running times differ slightly by source: 111 minutes in most German listings, about 115 minutes in Constantin Film's home-video specifications, and 120 minutes for the DCP version recorded by filmportal.de.^{1 • 3 • 2}

Reception and box office

The film opened in German cinemas on 31 October 2019 and sold more than five million tickets, making it the most-attended German film of that year.¹ The Numbers records $55,440,520 grossed in Germany and $56,532,065 worldwide, with later releases in Slovakia and the Czech Republic in June 2020 adding smaller sums.⁵ It received the Bayerischer Filmpreis 2020 for Best Production, shared ex aequo with Systemsprenger, and a Bambi in the Film National category in 2019.²

Critical response was mixed. The FILMSTARTS review credited the star ensemble with keeping the film watchable but criticized the dialogue as contrived and objected to the newly added feel-good ending, which it argued defused the satire of the Italian original.⁹ Swiss broadcaster SRF judged the film entertaining and praised its casting, while noting that all adaptations tell the same story with the same secrets, so the material is original only to viewers who do not know Perfetti sconosciuti.¹⁰ On television the film performed solidly rather than exceptionally: 1.84 million viewers (6.1 percent market share) on Sat.1 in early 2023 and 2.64 million (11.9 percent) on Das Erste in July 2023.¹¹

The remake phenomenon

Das perfekte Geheimnis belongs to one of the most widely adapted film properties in cinema history. The Italian original Perfetti sconosciuti was remade in quick succession after its 2016 release; by the time the German version appeared, eleven international remakes already existed, and the film's rights had been sold to forty countries.^{9 • 10} With 24 remakes the property earned an entry in the Guinness Book of Records, and the count later rose to 28, with versions made in countries including Spain, South Korea, Mexico, France, China, Russia, Poland, India, Japan, Finland, Brazil, and Estonia.¹² The German version was among the most commercially successful of these adaptations, ahead of the South Korean Intimate Strangers (about 40 million dollars) and the Spanish Perfectos desconocidos (25 million dollars).¹³

References

1. Das perfekte Geheimnis, fernsehserien.de
2. Das perfekte Geheimnis, filmportal.de
3. Das perfekte Geheimnis, Constantin Film
4. Das perfekte Geheimnis, tv.ORF.at
5. Das Perfekte Geheimnis (2019), The Numbers
6. Deutscher Erfolgsfilm von 2019 bekommt Fortsetzung, kino.de
7. Das perfekte Geheimnis, CineStar
8. Das perfekte Geheimnis Presseheft, Praesens Film
9. Kritik zu Das perfekte Geheimnis: Neues Ende, neue Probleme, FILMSTARTS.de
10. Neu im Kino: Das perfekte Geheimnis, SRF
11. Handys auf den Tisch: Das perfekte Geheimnis, Quotenmeter
12. Absoluter Weltrekord! 28 Remakes, FILMSTARTS.de
13. Case History, e-duesse.it

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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