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Dimitrij Schaad

Stephen King Says This Netflix Spy Thriller Is a Must-Watch — And Millions Agree
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Stephen King might be the master of horror, but he’s also pretty active when it comes to recommending good TV. Over the years, he’s shared quite a few picks with his fans, including smart horror series and crime shows that are, as he once put it, “impossible not to binge.”

Back in 2022, King gave a shoutout to a Netflix show that many people might’ve missed. The series is called Kleo, and he described it as “a breath of fresh air.” In a post on X (formerly Twitter), he said: “Kleo (Netflix): What a breath of fresh air! Suspenseful and also very funny. I wonder, though, where Kleo’s money came from. Flying off to Mallorca mustn’t have been cheap, even in 1989.”

Via X

Kleo is a German action-thriller series that mixes suspense, dark humor, and spy drama. It first came out in August 2022 and just...
See full article at Comic Basics
  • 7/30/2025
  • by Hrvoje Milakovic
  • Comic Basics
Stephen King Recommends Netflix Series With Over 80 Million Hours Watched
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Stephen King has a long history of recommending movies and shows he loves, and one of his past picks is a Netflix spy series you might’ve missed. It’s called Kleo, and according to King, it’s “a breath of fresh air.”

Best known for his horror classics, King doesn’t just stick to scary stories. He’s shared his love for police dramas, clever takes on horror villains, and now, this action-packed German thriller. He posted his thoughts on X back in 2022, writing: “Kleo (Netflix): What a breath of fresh air! Suspenseful and also very funny. I wonder, though, where Kleo’s money came from. Flying off to Mallorca mustn’t have been cheap, even in 1989.” (source: Dread Central)

Via X

The show Kleo follows a woman named Kleo Straub, a former assassin for East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi. After completing a deadly mission in West Berlin,...
See full article at Fiction Horizon
  • 7/30/2025
  • by Valentina Kraljik
  • Fiction Horizon
7 Best Shows Like ‘Kleo’ To Watch If You Love the Series
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Kleo is a German spy action-thriller and dark comedy-drama series created by Hanno Hackfort, Richard Kropf, and Bob Konrad. The Netflix series is set in 1989, soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall and it follows the story of a former East German spy as she goes on a revenge mission to kill people who betrayed her. Kleo stars Jella Haase in the lead role with Dimitrij Schaad, Julius Feldmeier, Vincent Redetzki, and Marta Sroka starring in supporting roles. So, if you loved the dark comedy, thrilling drama, and espionage in Kleo here are some similar shows you should check out next.

Killing Eve Credit – BBC America

Killing Eve is a British spy thriller and dark comedy-drama series created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Based on a novel series titled Villanelle by author Luke Jennings, the BBC America series revolves around a bored British intelligence agent who is tasked with tracking down psychotic assassin,...
See full article at Cinema Blind
  • 8/13/2024
  • by Kulwant Singh
  • Cinema Blind
10 Best Spy Shows on Netflix Right Now
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One of the coolest and most beloved sub-genres for thriller, action, and drama fans is the spy genre and there’s a good reason. In a spy film or series, we get complicated and cool characters who put their lives on the line by going against numerous people and instead of always letting their guns talk they use more covert tactics, which are always thrilling to watch. So, Netflix being what it is, it has a large library of content and also some of the best spy shows you can find and that’s what inspired us to compile a list of the best spy shows you can watch on Netflix right now.

Fubar Credit – Netflix

Fubar is an action thriller and comedy-drama series created by Nick Santora. The Netflix series follows the story of Luke Brunner, a recently retired CIA agent who finds out that his daughter is also...
See full article at Cinema Blind
  • 8/13/2024
  • by Kulwant Singh
  • Cinema Blind
Kleo Season 2 Review: Retreading Familiar Ground
Jella Haase in Suck Me Shakespeer 2 (2015)
As the barrier between East and West crumbled, former assassin Kleo Straub searched for answers about her mysterious past. Season one of the hit spy-thriller Kleo saw our protagonist on a revenge-fueled mission after years of being wrongly imprisoned by the Stasi secret police. Now free but unmoored, Kleo worked to uncover the forces behind her downfall.

Season two picks up Kleo’s journey of self-discovery and brings him closer to home. Fleeing threats both new and familiar, she returns with reluctance to the suburban Berlin neighborhood of her childhood. There, surrounded by familiar haunts and faced with family secrets long buried, Kleo will find necessary but troubling clues about her origins.

Accompanied once more by police detective Sven Petzold, Kleo braces to re-open old wounds in pursuit of resolution. But powerful enemies from her former lives in both East and West Germany now hunt Kleo and the dangerous secrets she holds.
See full article at Gazettely
  • 7/27/2024
  • by Shahrbanoo Golmohamadi
  • Gazettely
'The Bear' Season 3 Premiere Moves, Apple TV+'s 'Disclaimer' First Look, and More
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“The Bear” Season 3 Will Premiere Earlier Than Expected

The kitchen’s open early!

Ahead of its highly anticipated Season 3 premiere, Hulu has announced “The Bear” will now premiere three hours sooner than originally scheduled. All 10 episodes of the Emmy Award winner’s junior season will be available exclusively on Hulu at 9 p.m. Et/6 p.m. Pt on Wednesday, June 26.

Season 3 will pick up where Season 2’s high-energy finale left off, as Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), and Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) continue to do what it takes to elevate and propel their beef-stand-turned-fine-dining-restaurant forward.

Watch the trailer for “The Bear” Season 3 below:

The Christopher Storer-created dramedy series also stars Abby Elliott, Lionel Boyce, Liza Colón-Zayas, and Matty Matheson, with Oliver Platt and Molly Gordon in recurring roles. In its first two seasons, it has picked up 10 Emmy Award wins, including Outstanding Lead Actor In A Comedy Series for White,...
See full article at The Streamable
  • 6/25/2024
  • by Ashley Steves
  • The Streamable
‘Skin Deep’s’ Schaad Brothers Talk Taking the Dystopia Out of Body Swap Movies and Their Queer Lion Win at the Venice Film Festival
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Body swaps are usually bad news in movies. I was a real estate agent close to a big deal, now I have to find a date for junior prom? Then, a wacky journey back to status quo — because the way things were is how they should be.

Or not, forwards “Skin Deep,” the intimate and slippery debut feature from German Kazakhstani director Alex Schaad. Adopting a high concept usually fit for farce, Alex Schaad and his brother, co-writer and actor Dimitrij Schaad, take on the body swap premise in search of more, destabilizing their characters’ notions of gender and bodily autonomy along the way.

Releasing stateside in New York and Los Angeles theaters this month, “Skin Deep” debuted at the Venice Film Festival in 2022. The premiere was already a dream come true for the brothers; then they won the Queer Lion, a prize voted for by a jury of critics...
See full article at Variety Film + TV
  • 2/3/2024
  • by J. Kim Murphy
  • Variety Film + TV
The Box Office Allure Of ‘Poor Things’ And ‘American Fiction’ – Specialty Preview
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It’s quiet but Poor Things and American Fiction are selling tickets.

The Yorgos Lanthimos film starring Emma Stone enters the weekend at just over $26 million on 1,950 screens, continuing a strong theatrical run for a movie some have called bonkers but is zipping along. American Fiction adds a few hundred screens this weekend in the latest leg of a carefully orchestrated platform release that has really worked for this film.

A24’s Zone Of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s landmark Holocaust film, is expanding. New specialty openings include Magnolia Pictures’ The Promised Land, Mubi’s How To Have Sex and Kino Lorber’s Skin Deep.

It’s a weekend with just one studio wide release that may have petered out. Some recent weeks have had zero new wide release. That’s been helping specialty films.

Poor Things’ screen count is down from about 2,400 last week, which was the widest since a Dec.
See full article at Deadline Film + TV
  • 2/3/2024
  • by Jill Goldsmith
  • Deadline Film + TV
‘Skin Deep’ Review: Entrancing German Body Swap Drama Wonders If People Can Ever Really Understand Their Partners
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The saying goes that in order to understand someone, you have to walk a mile in their shoes, but Alex Schaad’s broad yet entrancing “Skin Deep” offers an alternate method: In order to understand someone, try swapping bodies with them for a few days. That solution might be less efficient, but it’s far more complete. Indeed, the mysterious white tower at the center of the Esalen-like island retreat where this lightly supernatural German drama takes place is nothing if not a machine that creates empathy. It creates other feelings too, but the people who seem most receptive to and transformed by the experience tend to think of empathy as the ultimate goal, if only because they’ve exhausted all other means of achieving it.

These people aren’t sociopaths, they’re just in long-term relationships. They’ve arrived at that sad — but inevitable? — point where the soft intimacy...
See full article at Indiewire
  • 2/2/2024
  • by David Ehrlich
  • Indiewire
Skin Deep Review
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Skin Deep tackles the role of the body in shaping our identity and showcases that our bodies are more than just our appearances. The movie explores the complexities of chronic illness, highlighting the different ways individuals experience and perceive their own illnesses. The premise of couples swapping bodies raises questions about the merging of identities in relationships and the potential impact on personal agency. The film portrays the joys and conflicts of intertwining lives with another person.

In spite of the age-old idea, the characters of Skin Deep do not lose their minds when confronted with their own bodies inhabited by someone else, at least not all of them. The slowly unraveling premise of this thoughtful drama finds a couple, Leyla and Tristan, visiting an island where they are able to swap bodies with others. The pair is primarily played by Mala Emde and Jonas Dassler, respectively, but obviously, this changes throughout the narrative.
See full article at MovieWeb
  • 2/1/2024
  • by Josie Greenwood
  • MovieWeb
Alex Schaad
Skin Deep Review: Alex Schaad’s Body-Swapping Drama Is a Knotty Exploration of Identity
Alex Schaad
Alex Schaad’s Skin Deep is a film with a body-swapping premise that’s notable for its restraint. Though as fresh and conceptually far-reaching as a David Cronenberg film, it traffics in body ambivalence more than body horror, striking an eerie, wistful tone.

The story hinges on the interplay of various couples. The central of these, Leyla (Mala Emde) and Tristan (Jonas Dassler), travel by ferry to a remote and idyllic island where seasonal body-switching rituals take place. There they join Leyla’s friend Stella (Edgar Selge) in the initially jarring form of her elderly father, who recently died while inhabiting Stella’s aneurism-prone body. Leyla’s been suffering from chronic depression, so she and Tristan have decided to give the ritual a try, in the hope that a temporary shift in embodied perspective might help. They’re paired by lottery with another couple: Fabienne (Maryam Zaree) will swap with Leyla,...
See full article at Slant Magazine
  • 1/28/2024
  • by William Repass
  • Slant Magazine
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US Trailer for Body Swap Sci-Fi Romance 'Skin Deep' from Germany
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"You are the person you are, because of the body you have." Kino Lorber has revealed the new official US trailer for the indie German low key sci-fi drama titled Skin Deep, from filmmaker Alex Schaad. Not to be confused with the 1989 sex comedy with John Ritter also called Skin Deep. This first premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival and won the Queer Lion award, with stops at the Hamburg, Zurich, and Göteborg Film Festivals. At first glance, Leyla and Tristan seem like a happy young couple. When they travel to a remote, mysterious island, a game of identities begins, which changes everything – their perception, their sexuality, their whole "self." Kino Lorber adds: "Subverting genre and gender as it toggles from body swap thriller to intimate relationship drama, Skin Deep tells a story that transcends bodies, embracing the endless fluid possibilities in the question of what it means to truly love someone.
See full article at firstshowing.net
  • 1/9/2024
  • by Alex Billington
  • firstshowing.net
Mala Emde
Skin Deep - Jennie Kermode - 18211
Mala Emde
We meet Leyla (at this stage played by Mala Emde) and Tristan (Jonas Dassler) on the boat as they travel to the island. Leyla has been dozing. The air is fresh and damp with spray. There’s that sense of possibility which often precedes a holiday or other break from day to day routine, but neither of them can anticipate how much their experience will change them. Tristan has not understood how wrong things are to begin with, and Leyla may not quite understand why.

They are travelling to an island for a unique spiritual experience. There are plenty of those out there, you might note, but this is a little different. After picking out a lottery ticket, they are randomly paired with another couple, Mo (Dimitrij Schaad) and Fabienne (Maryam Zaree). Mo’s sleazy comments as he tries to break the ice may make you wonder if this is some kind of.
See full article at eyeforfilm.co.uk
  • 3/4/2023
  • by Jennie Kermode
  • eyeforfilm.co.uk
Kino Lorber acquires North American rights to Alex Schaad’s ‘Skin Deep’ from Beta Cinema (exclusive)
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Schaad’s directorial debut won the Queer Lion after debuting at Venice Critics’ Week.

Kino Lorber has acquired North American distribution rights from Beta Cinema to Alex Schaad’s body swap thriller Skin Deep, which premiered in 2022 in Venice Critics’ Week, where it was awarded the Queer Lion.

Skin Deep is the directorial debut of Alex Schaad, who previously won the Student Academy Award for his social media thriller Invention of Trust.

The film is co-written by Schaad and his brother Dimitrij Schaad and produced by Tobias Walker and Philipp Worm of Walker + Worm Productions, Bayerischer Rundfunk, and Donndorffilm.

In the film,...
See full article at ScreenDaily
  • 2/17/2023
  • by Tim Dams
  • ScreenDaily
Top 200 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2023: #153. Tim Mielants’ Wil
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Wil

A television director for about a decade (including episodes for Peaky Blinders), Tim Mielants got into features with 2019’s Patrick (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival) followed by 2021’s Nobody Has to Know (a non-solo which had its world preem at TIFF). Production on the ambitious WWII drama Wil took place in May of last year in Liege and Poland featuring Stef Aerts, Matteo Simoni, Annelore Crollet, Kevin Janssens, Dirk Roofthooft, Dimitrij Schaad and Pierre Bokma. Producers include Hans Everaert, Guy Goedgezelschap, Tomas Leyers and Jan Segers.

Gist: Based on the bestselling novel by Jeroen Olyslaegers and written by Carl Joos, Wilfried Wils is an auxiliary policeman in Antwerp at the start of the Second World War.…...
See full article at IONCINEMA.com
  • 1/9/2023
  • by Eric Lavallée
  • IONCINEMA.com
Netflix Renews German Spy Thriller ‘Kleo’ For Season Two
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Exclusive: Netflix has renewed German spy thriller Kleo for a second season.

The show is set in 1987 and follows East German spy Kleo Straub, played by Jella Haase, who kills a businessman in West Berlin while on a mission with a secret Stasi commando. Not long after, she’s arrested by the Stasi on spurious claims and denounced by everyone she knows. After two years in jail, the Berlin Wall falls, and Kleo is suddenly free, but she soon finds out that the conspiracy against her is much bigger than she could have imagined, and an ominous red suitcase appears to be the missing puzzle piece.

Kleo season one was unveiled on a mega Netflix Europe slate that included almost 20 projects in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, at which point the streamer committed to doubling its investment in the region to 500M Euros (482M) between 2021 and 2023. Other shows on the slate included historical thriller The Empress.
See full article at Deadline Film + TV
  • 9/29/2022
  • by Max Goldbart
  • Deadline Film + TV
Jonas Dassler
Venice Review: Skin Deep Tears Down Walls of Gender, Sexuality, Psychology, and Identity
Jonas Dassler
What makes a person? Mind or body? Take that line of inquiry even further and ask what it is you love about your significant other. Is it how they look or who they are? The combination of answers to these questions are infinite because we as people are too. Maybe looks or humor or generosity got you through the door, but those can’t stop you from leaving alone. At some point you must dig deeper to discover it’s the indefinable essence beneath their skin and psyche that truly draws you close. And if that’s necessary to be able to spend the rest of your life with this person who was a total stranger mere seconds before you met them, shouldn’t it also be true to love yourself?

The lucky of us who never have to ask often never think to ask, either. It’s why someone...
See full article at The Film Stage
  • 9/5/2022
  • by Jared Mobarak
  • The Film Stage
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