Film Review: Face Down examines the generational impact of a single violent act

"Thomas Niedermayer — who was also the West German consul — was kidnapped to secure the transfer of IRA members Dolors and Marian Price from an English prison"

Tanya Williams-Powell, granddaughter of Thomas Niedermayer, who was abducted and murdered by the IRA in 1973, speaking at the Clayton Hotel in Belfast, over the family's grief almost fifty years on following his murder. Picture date: Monday March 6, 2023.

• Face Down: The Disappearance of Thomas Niedermayer
• ★★★★☆
• Cinema release

Face Down: The Disappearance of Thomas Niedermayer (12A) opens in Belfast in 1973 with the abduction of the German industrialist who was then the general manager of the Grundig plant in the city.

In political terms, Niedermayer — who was also the West German consul — was kidnapped to secure the transfer of IRA members Dolors and Marian Price from an English prison.

But Gerry Gregg’s film, which is adapted from his own book by David Blake Knox, is as invested in the personal as it is the political: the story is told by Thomas Niedermayer’s granddaughters Tanya and Rachel, as they explore the facts of the kidnapping, the long silence that followed his abduction — the IRA initially claimed responsibility before disavowing involvement – and the litany of tragedies that followed in its wake.

For a documentary that largely employs talking heads, photographs, and grim black-and-white footage of ‘the Troubles’, and keeps dramatic reconstructions to the bare minimum, Face Down is as gripping as any thriller, albeit a thriller that is deeply rooted in the harrowing consequences for Thomas’s wife Ingeborg and his daughters, Gabrielle and Renate.

A powerful, haunting film about how a single violent act can devastate an entire family down through successive generations, Face Down makes for compulsive viewing.