It’s a race against time, because more and more new viruses are on the rise in Europe. Isolated from the rest of the world, the Friedrich Loeffler Institute is located on the Baltic Sea island of Riems. Here, under extreme security conditions, life-threatening viruses are stored: Ebola, rabies, swine fever, Crimean-Congo fever or Sars-CoV-2. Scientists are working under high pressure to put a stop to these new threats. For the ARTE film team, the “epidemic island” has opened its otherwise hermetically sealed gates, thus providing unique insights that are otherwise closed to the rest of the world.

WRI)TER & DIRECTOR: Jakob Kneser CAMERA: Michael Kern, Christian Eichenauer, Tobias Oberberger, Bert Peschel, Till Vielrose  EDITOR: Nils Schomers SOUND: Steven Altig, Simon Breitung, Alexander Joksimovic, Florian Schlamminger MUSIC: Markus Lehmann-Horn COMMISSIONING EDITOR: Ann-Christin Hornberger (Arte)