Anatomy

Paula, a medical student with a fierce drive, wins a coveted spot at a prestigious Heidelberg school. When the corpse of a young man she briefly met on the train turns up on her dissection table, the case suggests foul play or a mystery hiding in plain sight. As she digs deeper, she finds herself entangled in a web of secrecy among the faculty, rival students, and a hospital system that prizes results over ethics. With the city's clinical corridors closing in around her, Paula follows a trail from cold autopsies to whispered rumors, deciding how far she will go to uncover the truth. The pressure mounts as a quiet campus hides a fevered race to conceal the cause. She suspects that what begins as a routine dissection hides a larger scheme.

Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky and released in 2000, Anatomy is a German language thriller inspired by an original screenplay. The film places Paula in Heidelberg's medical world where ambition collides with risk in a tightly wound mystery.

Critics noted the clinical mood and taut pacing, anchored by Potente's portrayal of Paula. The story probes the ethics of elite medicine, the price of secrecy, and the way power reshapes identity when faced with life and death. Its questions linger after the credits as viewers weigh knowledge's price.

An early 2000s German thriller, Anatomy helped bolster Stefan Ruzowitzky and Franka Potente on the international map, showing that European genre cinema could deliver clinical dread without CGI spectacle. Its cold corridors and blunt moral questions linger in discussions of the era's edgy thrillers. Its impact on European thrillers endures.

Box office data outside Germany is sparse, reflecting a limited release and modest audience reach. The film performed primarily on the festival and art house circuit rather than a wide commercial run.