Netflix’s new German thriller, “Exterritorial” (2025), is a glossy addition to the catalogue of forgettable action capers. Despite an earnestly convincing lead performance from Jeanne Goursaud as Sara Wulf, where she navigates locked corridors and conniving manipulation with equal ease, the film channels an undercurrent too derivative to be taken seriously. Written and directed by Christian Zubert, “Exterritorial” has international espionage with a dose of “Die Hard”-like rescue tension. The film also puts an additional layer of paranoia, which makes Sara and the audience question the authenticity of the events. Let us look into the details of the film’s twists and turns.
Exterritorial (2025) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Sara Wulf (Jeanne Goursaud), a former soldier from the German Special Forces, walks into the U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt with her six-year-old son, Josh. Little does she know that she just walked into a carefully constructed trap. Josh’s father, a soldier himself, died in an ambush attack in the Afghanistan war. Sara was part of the same team and the sole survivor. The incident left her scarred and with symptoms of severe PTSD. Before walking into the consulate, we see Sara receiving a call from a journalist. This journalist sends her a video that might have a clue about the ambush in Afghanistan. Sara gives it a look and does not seem to recognize anyone.
While waiting in the queue for her visa, Sara leaves Josh in the playroom for a bit. When she comes back, she finds Josh missing. She searches everywhere without success. Her panic-stricken actions catch the attention of the security officers. The chief of security, Eric Kynch (Dougray Scott), comes to her aid. He is accompanied by a sergeant named Donovan. After looking into CCTV footage, Kynch and Donovan tell Sara that Josh never came to the consulate. It has been Sara alone, all along. It is revealed that Sara has episodes of paranoia.
Sara, however, refuses to believe that. Before she came to find Josh gone, she noticed a man shiftily take a duffel bag from a woman. She believes that the transaction has something to do with her son’s disappearance. So, she puts her military skills to use. She escapes through the glass window. Using a bit of daredevil parkour stunts, she reaches the restricted floors — the floors where Kynch refused to take her to. After a bit of evading actions, she enters a room from which she hears a voice.
To her disappointment, Sara does not find Josh there. Instead, she meets Kira (initially known as Irina). Kira is a Belarusian asylum seeker. She has been detained in the consulate indefinitely. Kira proposes to help Sara navigate the ways as she has been living in the consulate for a long time. In return, Sara has to help Kira escape to America. With Kira’s help, Sara finds the duffel bag full of drugs. Before they take that to Kynch, Kira is attacked by two assassins. After a gruelling fight, Sara takes the two men down. However, Kynch manages to subdue her when she comes out.
Exterritorial (2025) Movie Ending Explained:
Does Josh Exist?
When Sara wakes up, she finds herself chained to a bed in a medical care room. Kynch, this time accompanied by the Consul General Deborah Allen, explains to her that she is afflicted by paranoia. Kynch shows Sara the footage where she is seen talking to herself inside the playroom. She is also seen fighting a man alone. There is no image of Kira there. Kynch tells her that both Josh and Kira do not exist. She will be handed over to the German Police at the gate of the consulate, as they do not have any jurisdiction inside the consulate. The consulate is ‘Exterritorial.’
A distraught Sara is forced to accept the explanation that her medication might be malfunctioning. Just when she seems to have accepted that it is all in her head, Kira appears. She confirms that she is not imagining things. Kira is the daughter of an influential man in Belarus. Her father was killed in a government-overthrowing bid. She has the evidence on a pen drive, and people are after her. With Kira’s help, Sara goes inside Donovan’s office. From Donovan’s computer, Sara sees that the job offered to her by the US company was done according to the wishes of Donovan and Kynch.
How Does Sara Trap Eric?
Sara realizes that it was all planned and masterminded by Kynch. Kynch airbrushed Josh and Kira out of the CCTV footage to prove Sara is unstable in front of Deborah Allen. Not sure why Kynch did this, Kira plants a trap. She advertises on the consulate Intranet that a duffel bag has been found. To Sara and Kira’s delight, they find the man Sara saw in the morning making the duffel bag transaction. However, the drug transaction seems to be unrelated to the schemes of Kynch. But the man does provide Sara with a key component for her next plan, an all-access ID card.
Using the card, Sara helps Kira board an America-bound carrier. Before realizing Kynch is involved, Sara observes Kynch with her young daughter, Aileen. Aileen has a toy phone that can record messages and replay them. So, Sara kidnaps Aileen and takes her into the safety room. The room cannot be breached from outside. So, Sara and Aileen are out of the reach of everyone. She calls Kynch and asks him to release Josh first. Otherwise, she and Aileen will die inside the room as she has closed the air vent. Oxygen will soon run out.
Why Did Eric Kidnap Josh?
Kynch, being the cunning criminal he is, does not fall for the trap. He knows Sara will not go down to his level to kill an innocent child. He calls her bluff in private. Sara releases Aileen, but asks Kynch to come inside the safety room alone. She switches the speaker option of the room so that the conversation between her and Kynch can be heard by everyone outside, especially by General Deborah Allen. However, Kynch evades that trap once again. He switches off the room’s speaker before confessing his sins.
Kynch was one of the traitors who sold secrets to the Taliban in Afghanistan. It was due to his involvement that Sara’s unit got ambushed. As the sole survivor and witness, Sara has always been a problem for him. But that is not the reason he kidnapped Josh. Kynch reveals that he took money to kill Kira. But killing a high-profile refugee like her will have opened a huge can of worms. So, he needed a scapegoat. Someone to blame the murder on.
Kynch kidnapped Josh, knowing that would throw Sara off. He would establish Sara as the unstable military-trained killing machine, who was on the loose the day Kira was killed. No one would doubt that theory. Killing two birds with one stone, Kynch will also remove the last witness to his Afghanistan crimes. Kynch says all of this to Sara before proceeding to shoot her in the stomach.
Do Sara and Kira Escape Successfully?
After shooting Sara, Kynch shoots himself in the leg and leaves the room. He pretends to have been attacked by Sara. However, there was one ace up Sara’s sleeve as well. Sara switched the room’s speaker on, but that was just a ruse. She knew Kynch would not fall for that. After turning the speaker off, Kynch relaxed and made the blunder. Because Sara had another device — Aileen’s toy phone. Using that toy phone, she recorded Kynch’s confession.
Before Deborah’s men can blast the door open, a bloodied Sara comes out of it. She proceeds to play the recording of Kynch’s confession, before passing out from the blood loss. Kynch and Donovan are arrested. Deborah takes Sara to the hospital, and she survives. In the last scene, we see Sara having a video call with Kira, who seems to have moved to the USA safely. Sara also leaves for the States, as she appears to have taken a job there. This time, a genuine one. She and Josh bid adieu to her mother as they take a taxi to the airport.
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