[1] The young Roma Zarah burgles an apartment in Basel, witnesses a murder, and escapes undetected but loses an amulet.

In the meantime, Peter Hunkeler (Mathias Gnädinger), Kommissär (inspector) of the Basel Police, reflects on his impending retirement – in fact his boss, (prosecuting attorney) Staatsanwalt Suter, has already written him off and sends Hunkeler to Alsace to research a study about youth crime, but he prefers to spend his time at the local spa.

Hunkeler finds the girl as she breaks a car at a train station in Alsace: Zarah (Sophie Scholz) lost the amulet and confirms that she observed the murder from a hiding place.

But first the young Roma woman has to be surveyed by the youth advocate, and Hunkeler's boss is cheesed with him because he kidnapped Zarah from France to Switzerland.

The next day, the two Turkish gangsters have been arrested, but on occasion of the identification parade, Zarah identifies Ali's lawyer, attorney Spälti, and tells what she saw that evening when Aische was killed.

The Swiss German language movie bases on the 1999 novel Das Paar im Kahn by Hansjörg Schneider,[3] and was filmed at location in Basel and in Alsace in France.

Marie-Louise Bless, director of Das Paar im Kahn, told in an interview that she was contacted by Trudi Roth (Fascht e Familie) in 2000, and urged to read the novel to realize a film adaption.

The team was very generously supported by the Basel prosecutor's office and the youth advocate, unfortunately, the police did not provide staff and uniforms for filming.

[2] Although the novel's writer Hans Jörg Schneider and his publisher were contacted, there was initially no option granted on the film rights, so that the project have been proposed to SR DRS to be realized as a television movie.

But Putschert expanded the figure of the Roma girl Zarah from Alsace - in the novel a side story, but now directly woven into the homicide case, and so she witnesses the murder.

Das Paar im Kahn premiered at 10e Cinéma tout écran at Geneva in Switzerland in October 2004 and at the 40th Solothurn Film Festival in January 2005.