Exterritorial is a 2025 German action-thriller now streaming on Netflix, with a runtime of 1 hour 49 minutes and rated 16+. Christian Zübert writes and directs the movie, which follows Sara (Jeanne Goursaud), a former German special forces operative whose world shatters when her young son vanishes inside the heavily guarded U.S. consulate in Frankfurt.
Desperate and determined, Sara plunges into a maze of cover-ups and buried secrets, relying on her training and instincts to fight her way through a hostile system. What starts as a mother’s search quickly spirals into a tense, high-stakes battle for survival.
The Premise
Sara, a German ex-soldier, is still haunted by the ambush in Afghanistan that claimed her husband and nearly her sanity. She’s spent years wrestling with PTSD, trying to hold it together for the one thing she has left: her young son, Josh. To start over, she takes a trip to the U.S. Embassy in Frankfurt to finalise a job opportunity that might offer them both a future.
But everything unravels in seconds.
She leaves Josh in the embassy’s playroom, just for a moment. When she returns, he’s gone. No staff seem to know anything. Surveillance footage shows Sara walking in… alone. No child. As panic rises, so does the gaslighting. She’s told she imagined it all, that she’s unstable. Delusional.
But they picked the wrong mother to lie to.
Sara escapes the embassy’s holding area, leaping from windows and slipping through locked doors. Along the way, she finds an unlikely ally: Kira, a woman quietly being held as a political hostage. Together, they search for Josh and try to unravel the twisted agenda hiding beneath the embassy’s polished surface.
Meanwhile, Eric Kynch, the cold and calculating head of security, is closing in. He’s not just trying to stop her, he’s trying to erase her. But through blood, fists, and broken glasses, Sara refuses to be erased.
Driven by raw maternal instinct and a soldier’s skillset, she carves a path through a web of lies, determined to expose the truth and save her son, no matter the cost.
Think John Wick meets Atomic Blonde, but this time, it’s a mother kicking down Embassy doors.
Casts and Performances
Jeanne Goursaud takes the lead as Sara in Exterritorial. Though I’m not deeply familiar with German cinema, she completely sold me on her performance. Jeanne doesn’t just play the heroine, she embodies her. She brings a raw, grounded intensity to the role, blending physical strength with emotional vulnerability. You believe her desperation, her fear, and her unrelenting determination. She’s fit, fierce, and utterly convincing.
Dougray Scott plays Eric Kynch, the head of embassy security, and he slips into the role of calculated antagonist with ease. His history of playing villains pays off, as in Mission: Impossible 2, and hearing him speak German throughout much of the film added a nice surprise. He’s cold and collected, the perfect foil to Sara’s raw emotion.
Lera Abova (as Kira Wolkowa) brings a cool unpredictability to the role of Sara’s unlikely ally, while Kayode Akinyemi’s Sergeant Donovan adds quiet menace from the shadows of the embassy’s conspiracy.
The cast works well together, but make no mistake—this is Jeanne’s movie. She carries the emotional weight and physical intensity with a performance that anchors the entire film.
What I Liked
What stood out to me in Exterritorial was how raw and grounded the action felt. The hand-to-hand combat was sharp and well-choreographed, and the stunt work had the kind of nerve you’d expect from an Ethan Hunt-style thriller.
It was refreshing to see a female lead take that kind of physical punishment and keep going, not because it’s brand new, but because that level of determination and fight still hits different when done well. Jeanne Goursaud’s resilience makes you root for her from start to finish.
What also stood out was the way the fight sequences were shot. Instead of quick cuts and dizzying edits, the camera held its ground, following the action in longer takes that made everything feel more grounded and real. And while the story echoes familiar themes, the embassy hostage-cover-up plot gave it a fresh twist.
It felt personal rather than just procedural. That made it more than just another action flick.
Weak Points
While Exterritorial delivers on tension and solid action, not everything landed cleanly. Including a drug smuggling subplot felt oddly placed, as if the film didn’t trust its core story enough. It distracted from the emotional weight of Sara’s search and diluted what could’ve been a tighter, more focused narrative.
Kira’s character, too, felt a little forced. Yes, she was meant to be an ally, but her backstory didn’t quite land. A different setup for her could’ve made her presence more believable and her connection with Sara more meaningful.
And as intense as the fight scenes were, some of the logic behind them stretched too far. There’s a moment where a guy gets smashed in the head with a toilet tank lid, and somehow pops back up seconds later. Or when Sara repeatedly injures her shoulder, even intentionally dislocates and sets it back in at one point, only to keep using that same arm like nothing happened.
The emotional stakes were high, but the physical realism could’ve used a tighter grip.
Final Thoughts
Exterritorial may not reinvent the action-thriller wheel, but it delivers where it counts: tension, grit, and a woman on a relentless mission. Jeanne Goursaud shines as Sara, giving us a grounded performance that blends vulnerability with brute determination. The film stumbles a bit with some side plots and logic gaps, but the core story, a mother refusing to be dismissed or broken, holds strong.
If you enjoy raw, close-quarters action with a dose of emotional weight, this one’s worth a look.
Rating
I would rate this 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Have you checked out Exterritorial yet? We’d love to know your take.
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