Dear Child is a new German limited drama about a missing persons case that’s reopened after 13 years. The series premiered September 7, 2023 on Netflix and quickly garnered tons of fan attention. Currently, the new show is #2 in the streamer’s Top 10 shows in the United States.
The story follows Lena, who lives in isolation with two children and their abductor. One night, she escapes and is in a dangerous car accident, which causes her to be hospitalized. There, Lena’s parents are reunited with their daughter and the twisty story of the kidnapping begins to unfold.
The synopsis teases, “The true extent of this nightmare is revealed with the arrival of Lena’s parents at the hospital the same night. They have been desperately searching for their missing daughter for almost 13 years.”
Joel Keller praised the show in his review, writing, “Dear Child presents its audience with a confounding puzzle and fragmented perspectives, but in a way that draws viewers in instead of ticking them off, which happens less often than you might think.”
The show is directed and written by Isabel Kleefeld and Julian Pörksen, and stars Kim Riedle, Naila Schuberth, Sammy Schrein, Hans Löw, and Haley Louise Jones.
With audiences constantly being fascinated by real-life abduction stories and true crime, many were left wondering if Dear Child is based on a true story? Continue reading to find out.
No, Dear Child is not based on a true story. Rather, the series is an adaptation of the bestselling novel Dear Child – also known as Liebes Kind – by German novelist Romy Hausmann. Both the series and its source material are entirely fictional.
In a 2020 interview with Book Web, author Hausmann said she writes her story without extensively planning the plot. “I just set up the initial premise and try to create the characters as defined as possible,” she said. “Then I start to write, asking myself again and again how this character should behave next, what is realistic, and above all: How would I behave in this situation?”
Ahead of the show’s release, writer and director Kleefeld told Netflix that she was “fascinated” by the book and read it in one night. “The result is an exciting game with reality, a puzzle that the audience can always add to and reassemble. It is the story of a crime that has many victims, directly or indirectly,” she shared.
Ironically enough, while Dear Child is not based on a true story, Hausmann revealed in the same interview mentioned above that she is a fan of true crime and watches “a lot of documentaries on television.” She stated that she’s “particularly interested in unsolved crime.” Additionally, Gone Girl and The Girl on Train, both of which are fictional crime novels that have received screen adaptations, inspired her to pen the story.
There you have it! Dear Child is not based on a true story, but has some loose connections to the true crime genre.
Dear Child is currently streaming on Netflix.