Dark (2017–2020) is a German science-fiction mystery thriller created by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese for Netflix. The series begins in the fictional town of Winden, where the disappearance of two children exposes secrets, lies and hidden connections between four families: the Kahnwalds, the Nielsens, the Dopplers and the Tiedemanns. What first appears to be a missing-person mystery gradually becomes a complex story about time travel, determinism, family trauma and repeating cycles across several generations. Louis Hofmann stars as Jonas Kahnwald, with Lisa Vicari, Oliver Masucci, Karoline Eichhorn, Maja Schöne, Jördis Triebel, Andreas Pietschmann, Mark Waschke and many others forming the large ensemble cast. Dark was Netflix’s first German original series and became known for its dense narrative structure, bleak atmosphere, carefully controlled visual style and the recurring idea that everything is connected.
Dark is set in the fictional German town of Winden, but the series was filmed mainly in Berlin and Brandenburg. Winden is not a real place; it was built from many different locations around the region, giving the town a deliberately anonymous and unsettling quality. The Winden caves, one of the series’ most important locations, were created in the Saarmund forest between Tremsdorf and Saarmund, where a temporary cave entrance was built for filming. Reinfelder Schule in Berlin-Westend was used as the Winden school, while the wooden chapel and cemetery at Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf became the church and graveyard closely associated with Noah and several of the show’s key revelations. The gates of the Winden nuclear power plant were filmed near the bell tower of Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, with the reactor towers added digitally, while the forest road and bus-stop scenes were filmed at a driving academy in Zossen. Other locations include the Akademie der Künste in Hansaviertel as the Winden police station, Schloss Lanke in Brandenburg as the exterior of Regina Tiedemann’s Waldhotel, Lungenklinik Heckeshorn in Wannsee for hospital material, and Studio Babelsberg for major constructed interiors, including nuclear-reactor and controlled production spaces. The locations give Dark a very specific atmosphere: forests, rain-soaked streets, schools, bunkers, caves, churches, abandoned railway lines and institutional buildings all make Winden feel like a place trapped between everyday German suburbia and something older, hidden and inescapable.
Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf
Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf is a large forest cemetery in Stahnsdorf, Brandenburg, immediately southwest of Berlin, Germany. The cemetery was created by the Protestant…