Doctor Ballouz
Who is the traumatized chief doctor and philanthropist?
“Doktor Ballouz” (Merab Ninidze), the doctor from the Uckermark, stops at his wife’s accident site, then another accident happens …
© ZDF / Stefan Erhard
“Doctor Ballouz” is the chief physician of a clinic in the Uckermark. The traumatized man and philanthropist is played by Merab Ninidze.
Dr. Ballouz is the chief physician of a small clinic in the Uckermark. The six-part primetime series named after him begins on the day he returns to everyday hospital life. He is traumatized by the accidental death of his wife, but he has not lost the great dedication with which he looks after the large and small patients, their relatives and the clinic staff.
The TV series “Doktor Ballouz” is based on the non-fiction book “Germany outside: The life of Dr. Amin Ballouz, country doctor” by Jasper F. Wenzel about a real Dr. Ballouz, who runs his country doctor’s practice in the northeast of Brandenburg. The six episodes of “Doktor Ballouz” will be broadcast on Thursdays (April 8th, 15th and 22nd) from 8.15pm in double episodes on ZDF.
The internationally sought-after actor from Tbilisi
Dr. Ballouz is played by the actor Merab Ninidze (55), born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1965. At the age of 30 he moved to Austria in 1994, and now lives and works in Vienna and Berlin. His face will be familiar to many cinema fans, because he played the male lead (Walter Redlich) alongside Juliane Köhler (55) in Caroline Links (56) based on the novel “Nirgendwo in Afrika” (2001). The film won an Oscar in 2003 in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
Merab Ninidze stands in front of the camera for German and international productions. The latter includes his role Mirov in the US series “Homeland”, which he impersonated from 2018 to 2020. In 2018 he was also seen in the British-American television series “McMafia”, which is based on a book of the same name by Misha Glenny (62). In the spy thriller “Der Spion” / “Ironbark” (2020) Ninidze played an officer and secret agent of the Soviet Union; his opponent, the British businessman Greville Wynne, who was recruited by the British MI-6 and the CIA, played the British film star Benedict Cumberbatch (44).
German productions also rely on Merab Ninidze’s skill and charisma. He was part of the successful series “Germany 83” (2015) and the “Spring” series (2015-2018). Since 2019 he has played the Polish commissioner Lucjan Gadocha in the “Usedom-Krimis”.
Merab Ninidze on Dr. Ballouz
About the philosophical Dr. Ballouz, the actor Merab Ninidze told the broadcaster: “Ballouz is a good person. Open and curious. He takes time for his patients and believes in the good in people. The loss of his wife shapes him and makes him an even greater philanthropist. ” He goes on to rave about his role: “Ballouz is unconventional and distinctive – a convinced idealist who seems almost old-fashioned in our time. That’s what attracted me to this character.”
What Merab Ninidze with Dr. Ballouz connects, the actor explains: “To be a stranger in a foreign country is an experience that personally connects me very much with Ballouz.”
That’s what the first double episode is about
“Doctor Ballouz – Welcome back”
When a heavily pregnant woman and her six-year-old daughter have an accident on an avenue, chief physician Dr. Ballouz first aid and drives the two of them to his clinic. Together with neurologist Dr. Barbara Forster (Julia Richter) he fights for the life of the mother and her unborn baby. Even the girl whom Dr. Ballouz only thought she was unharmed, needs his help. With her, however, the soul is wounded. Meanwhile, assistant doctor Dr. Michelle Schwan (Nadja Bobyleva) in the ambulance a young family man whose arm broke while playing soccer with his sons – but soon there is a dramatic turn …
“Doctor Ballouz – Greetings to my wife”
Dr. Ballouz fulfills the last wish of a terminally ill person and enables him to say goodbye. For assistant doctor Dr. Swan an important lesson. At the same time, she and Vincent Patzke (Vincent Krüger), who does his community service in the hospital, get to know a different side through the patient. When the cancer patient gets worse, Dr. For the patient’s sake Ballouz his cat phobia. Meanwhile, an unconscious security guard is admitted with an aneurysm in his head, but his wife refuses to allow the operation …