The Times
Culturmag.de
Saxon Newspaper
Munich Merkur
The Times
SWR Kunscht
Stuttgart Newspaper
Deutschlandradio
Stern TV
tip Berlin
taz
Status.de
The Daily Progress, December 23, 2017
The film, for all of its true-crime conventions — including an opening shot that leers into the gruesome murder scene through a series of police photographs — establishes both a timeline and a steady trickle of reasonable doubt through its two-hour run time. Interviews with investigators and attorneys who have all reached their own conclusions regarding Soering’s guilt are intercut with grainy video of the trials that led to Soering’s conviction, the first of their kind to be broadcast in Virginia. Full review
Whatnottodoc, December 15, 2017
After a high-profile, televised trial – the first of its kind – the prosecution felt that justice had been served. But Elizabeth’s and Jens’s versions differ wildly, encompassing dark family secrets, selfless love, and broken promises – leading to an indictment of the American justice system. In their gripping investigation, Vetter and Steinberger explore what really happened on that fateful night, and why. Full review
The Hollywood Reporter, December 14, 2017 by Frank Scheck
Featuring compelling real-life figures who practically invite casting guesses for the inevitable Hollywood dramatization, Killing for Love should easily satisfy viewers who can’t get enough of this stuff. Full review
The New York Times, December 14, 2017 by Ben Kenigsberg
Probably dives into the weeds too quickly and could have used a tighter edit. Still, drawing on a wealth of courtroom video, the film lays out a persuasive argument for reasonable doubt. Full review
The Los Angeles Times, December 14, 2017 by Robert Abele
A gripping murder mystery about the fated coupling of a pair of calculating romantics too smart for their own good, and the limits of the American justice system. Full Review
Red Carpet Crash, December 13, 2017 by Caitlin Zeigler
This documentary is very interesting and shows what’s wrong with the justice system. With voice work from Daniel Brühl reading Jens Söring’s letters and Imogen Poots reading Elizabeth Haysom’s letters, this doc discusses the case that saw two young lovers commit murder to be with each other. There is so much more to the story than what is initially mentioned. Full Review
Film Journal International, December 13, 2017 by Chris Barsanti
A bloody 1985 double homicide and the media hysteria that encircled it are revisited in this deeply sourced but frustrating investigation of whether justice was truly served. Full Review
The Daily Beast, December 9, 2017 by Nick Schager
Earlier this year, Netflix’s The Confession Tapes recounted, via six real-life cases, the ways in which false confessions might be elicited by law enforcement. But what if an untrue admission wasn’t the byproduct of coercion, or a suspect’s lack of education, or the terrible pressure of a given circumstance, but the result of maniacal love?That’s the argument forwarded by Killing for Love, Karin Steinberger and Marcus Vetter’s riveting new documentary, whose two-hour theatrical version (debuting Friday, Dec. 15 in NY and LA) has been assembled from a larger six-part TV series that aired earlier this year on the BBC. Full Review
Triad City Beat, March 29, 2017 by Eric Ginsburg
Propelled by an eerie rendition of “I Put A Spell On You,” the opening sequence of The Promise bumps down country Virginia roads, coming to a stop at the Haysom home. The bottom falls out as the music disappears, and gruesome images of murdered couple Nancy and Derek Haysom lying on their floor provide a jarring kickstart to the film. The Promise is another engrossing story of how wrong the so-called justice system can go, the kind of documentary that would appeal to anyone who consumed Serial or “Making a Murderer,” or the type of person who reads true-crime thrillers. It’s filled with all sorts of sordid details and captivating characters, and the more it progresses the more it appears that Elizabeth did indeed put a spell on the young Soering, who claims he tried to take a noble fall for his love despite no involvement in the crime. Full Review
The Guardian, March 8, 2017 by Chitra Ramaswamy
A compelling documentary reveals that the story of the 1985 murder of Derek and Nancy Haysom is as perplexing as ever. It begins in the way all true crime must begin. Slow zoom shots of a house encircled by police tape. A blood-spattered shoe. Creepy interiors. Bodies. More blood. Here is the crime scene: the heart of a murder mystery we know will be fraught with more inconsistencies and outlandish twists than an episode of Sherlock. These images will now haunt me for days. Anyone who has binged on Making a Murderer, Serial or even Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (the original true-crime “non-fiction novel”) will know the cocktail of emotions this increasingly popular and morally dubious genre induces: obsessive fascination, horror, cynicism and loss of faith in the justice system. I, for one, am getting sick of the bitter aftertaste. Read more
Huffington Post, March 3, 2017 by Sean O´Grady
At the end of it all – and watching it and the old trial footage was like being a juror at some kind of retrial – the best conclusion was the pragmatic one reached by the Governor of Virginia Tim Kaine in 2010, which was that Soering had already served a conventionally long sentence and was no danger to the public and could be safely packed off to Germany. That said, miscarriages of justice sometimes turn out to be no such thing, even if they have distinguished journalists and “new evidence” coming forward that appears compelling. At all events, it made for morbidly fascinating viewing, even at an extraordinary length for modern telly. Full Review
Financial Times, March 3, 2017 by Martin Hoyle
There are moments in the totally riveting Killing for Love when a fictional thriller suggests itself, complete with casting. The two young people (they met when he was 18, she a couple of years older) on trial for murdering her parents suggest the sort of British actors we are so rich in. She softly spoken, almost inaudible, hinting at unspeakable attentions from her mother, the educated voice evoking her Canadian-European background; he, round-faced and bespectacled, looking far younger, quick wit enunciated in perfect English, is from a German diplomatic family. The letters produced smoulder with passion. What a drama! Full Review
Cinevue, January 13, 2017
An absorbing true crime documentary. Full review
Brooklyn Magazine, November 9, 2016
Familiar and satisfying…continues in the “New True Crime” tradition. Full review
The Guardian, November 5, 2016 by Kate Connolly
A new documentary makes its US premiere at the Virginia film festival on Saturday at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville – where Söring and Haysom first met in 1984. Considerable resentment has been expressed locally that it is being shown at all. The Promise is also due to be serialised in six parts in the UK on the BBC in March. Full Review
Richmond Times-Dispatch, October 19, 2016 by Markus Schmidt
One of the on-screen highlights is the North America premiere of the film documentary “The Promise,” directed by German journalist Karin Steinberger, that re-examines the murder of Nancy and Derek Haysom in Bedford County and the subsequent trials of their daughter, Elizabeth Haysom, and Jens Soering, her German boyfriend, three decades ago. “Our goal is to tell the story of a miserable, destroyed life that started with a big love between two young people,” Steinberger said in a phone interview from Munich. The journalist, who has written about the case since 2006 and has interviewed Soering several times, is planning to attend the screening. Full Review
C-Ville, September 29, 2016 by Lisa Provence
The centerpiece film will be the North American premiere of The Promise, the German-made documentary of the 1985 murders of the Haysoms, which riveted Central Virginia and put UVA students Elizabeth Haysom, their daughter, and Jens Soering, her besotted boyfriend, behind bars. Soering, who has maintained his innocence, recently filed a petition for absolute pardon. Read more
Daily Progress, September 29, 2016 by Shirley MacLaine
This year’s Centerpiece Film is the North American premiere of “The Promise,” a documentary by German filmmakers Karin Steinberger and Marcus Vetter about the 1985 murders of Nancy and Derek Haysom and the arrests and convictions of UVa honors students Jens Soering and Elizabeth Haysom. Read more
C-Ville, August 31, 2016 by Lisa Provence
The real-life film noir, screened for reporters August 24, opens with lonely highways and dark country roads to Loose Chippings, the genteel Bedford home of Derek and Nancy Haysom, and then slams the viewers with gruesome murder scene photos that one investigator described as “like stepping in a slaughterhouse.” Full Review
Telepolis, November 1, 2017 by Rüdiger Suchsland
“The Promise”, a extraordinary, dramatic, highly thrilling, oppressive and disturbing documentary made by the directors Marcus Vetter and Karin Steinberger, deals with an intense, maybe crazy, maybe rare big love. It tells about obsession and – possibly – perversion. It tells of pitfalls and deeps of the family, which as you know is not just a place for safety, but also for terror. At the same time it is a social drama, which at least lets you anticipate what happens behind the curtains of the “rich ten thousands”, not only in America. And “The Promise” is a film about the pitfalls and deeps of the US justice system, about injustice which is done in the name of justice. Read more
Dokumentarfilm.info, by Kay Hoffmann
This is material for a thriller and you can easily imagine the pictures, if Hollywood had made a movie out of it and not the German documentary filmmaker Marcus Vetter, who produced with “The Promise” a documental thriller, which is not obliged to tension, but to the search for the truth. But this search is highly thrilling, electrifying and also devastating.
Dokumentarfilm.info
Culturmag, October 15, 2017 bySonja Hartl
“The Promise – first love life sentence“ has everything you can expect of a thrilling courtroom drama: disputable evidence, a self-confident investigator, theatrical prosecutors, a maybe biased judge, revealed family-secrets and a private detective, who wants to prove Soering`s innocence. Additionally there are the former lovers, rational thinking and acting Jens Soering and emotional, charismatic Elizabeth Haysom. All this makes the movie, despite its subtitles, a very thrilling documentary, not hiding its positioning for Soering. Read more
Spielfilm.de by Bianka Piringer
A gruesome double killing with unanswered questions until today, a court proceeding full of mistakes and the story of a fatal juvenile love: this documentary can easily be compared with a fictional thriller. Read more
by Wolfram Hannemann
A thrilling documentary, revealing many open questions who could give the case Jens Soering a new turn. Read more
Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 16, 2017 by Christina Wittich
„The Promise“ is thrilling. It satisfies a voyeurism, which is to be seen in all television channels: the documentation and workup true crimes, the virtual ‚co-investigating‘ not on the ‚Tatort‘, but on a true murder case. Read more
Moviegeek, September 10, 2017 by Christoph N. Kellerbach
„The Promise“ is one of those documentaries about a crime, which linger in the viewer’s memory long after watching it. Read more
Kino Zeit, Juni 25, 2017 by Harald Mühlbeyer
„The Promise“ starts like a movie about court proceeding: a gruesome crime, pictures of the scene, the process and all seems to be clear. Skilfully Karin Steinberger and Marcus Vetter integrate small breaches in the supposedly clear case. Hints which become indications. Read more
Cinema.de
This fascinating documentary made by Marcus Vetter and Karin Steinberger reconstructs the scandalous court process and gives the portrait of a disastrous romance. Read more
Filmspleen
The dramatic art behind this true story was reviewed excellently and directed enthralling. Read more
Zitty, October 25, 2016 by Leonie Brovot
„The Promise“ is edited like a thriller. In the original court scenes you listen to the beautiful Elizabeth, who obviously seems to know very well how to impress other people. Watching the strictly arguing Soering you become speechless. „The Promise“ has one explicit goal: Soering has to be transferred to a German prison or the case has to be reopened.The documentary is not only highly thrilling, but also very distressing with this human tragedy. Read more
The double murder of Nancy and Derek Haysom in 1985 was a media spectacle. The Haysoms were well-respected community members in their hometown, Lynchburg, Virginia, then they were brutally murdered, almost executed, in their home. The court trials, in which their daughter Elizabeth Haysom and her German boyfriend Jens Soering were tried for the murders, were broadcasted live on US television – something unheard of previous to the case. You can study and follow the developments in the case over thirty years through our exclusive and extensive archive which contains newspaper articles and TV materials. The archive is unique in that it holds the most complete collection of American and German articles and TV materials from 1985 until today. The material was made available by the Virginia Press Service News Clipping Bureau, by different newspapers, journalists and the WSET 13 Daily News Channel.
Press Contact USA | Lauren Schwartz | IFC FILMS – 646-273-7214 | Lauren.schwartz@ifcfilms.com
Sales agent Worldwide | Louise Rosen | fon +1 617.899 66 29 | louise@louiserosenltd.com
Editotial and press contact Germany | Karin Steinberger | fon +49 (0)89.21 83 86 17 | karin.steinberger@sueddeutsche.de
