Kleo

Hanno Hackfort, Bob Konrad and Richard Kropf's Kleo launched on Netflix in August 2022 and was widely received as one of the most distinctive recent German-language genre productions. The series ran for two seasons through 2024 and consolidated the Berlin-based screenwriting trio's continuing engagement with the post-Cold-War German genre register. Jella Haase, in the central role, anchors the series with one of her career-defining performances.

Kleo Straub (Haase), a former Stasi assassin imprisoned by the East German state on a false charge in 1987, is released in 1990 after the fall of the Wall and German reunification render her conviction void. Across the months that follow she sets out to identify and confront everyone responsible for her downfall, a list that includes former Stasi colleagues, West German intelligence officers, KGB handlers, and a former lover whose loyalty had been compromised. Dimitri Abold plays the West Berlin detective who finds himself investigating Kleo's continuing trail; Julius Feldmeier plays Sven Petzold.

The series operates simultaneously as black-comic revenge thriller, post-reunification political-historical document, and stylistically distinctive piece of contemporary Berlin set-design (period East-German interior reconstruction, 1980s synth soundtrack, fashion-forward central character costuming). Haase's central performance (physically committed, comedically precise, finally emotionally serious) is among the most-cited Netflix-Germany lead performances of recent years.