Eva Bay
A Christmas reunion becomes a gateway to the past in this three-part series that explores the intimate complexities of one family's history.
Nina and Karl are a perfectly normal, crazy couple. They can't live with or without each other. But suddenly, Nina can no longer stand the routine and decides to run away. She wants to be somebody else, though not (yet) an adult. The unfamiliar loneliness also affects Karl. Nina, meanwhile, doesn't seem to be able to get rid of Karl quite so easily.
Plum out of luck, Swabian farmer Huber’s farm goes under. Then his girlfriend Birgit takes over her father’s newly-acquired firm – in former East Germany. That's reason enough for Huber to bail on his debts and head out on a road trip through southwest Germany.
The life of Jorg Geissner, a German banker, totally transforms with a visit to Paladiki Island, Greece. A business trip to check on a project called “Galapagos in Greece” by the islanders and for which his bank extended a loan and credit, brought him there. Being a German, he wants to investigate thoroughly, but Panos, a mini-mart owner, and the mayor try their utmost to sabotage him—to camouflage a not-so-good reality. After every single trial resulted in nothing because of the islanders’ secret meddling, Jorg’s trip becomes elongated, like The Odyssey’s, forcing him to contemplate the priorities and responsibilities in life again.
Isabell Suba, ambitious up-and-coming director, has made it – one of her short films is in the line-up of the most important film festival of the world! When she arrives at the 65. Cannes film festival, she has face the accomplished facts: David, her incompetent producer, has kindly sublet their cosy joint apartment to other festival guests. The other bad news: There is not a single movie in the competition directed by a woman! This affirms Isabell’s qualms: The film business demands women to gear up instead of dressing up low cut! Moreover, the chauvinistic remarks of her comrade-in-arms David who feels comfortable around the clichéd gender stereotypes from the Stone Age seemingly prevalent in Cannes infuriate Isabell. As if this wasn’t enough already, a shattering feedback on her new film project by a potential investor finally causes her to doubt herself. Before she can live her dream up at the Olympus of film business, she must first find out who really believes in her.
This is a family story that covers thirty years in the life of the Freytag family (narrated by the grandson, Robert). When his grandfather returns from Russia in 1949, he becomes part of the German "economic miracle" by producing garden gnomes. Klaus, Robert's father, wants to become a writer. He marries Gisela who almost immediately gets pregnant with Robert - but the marriage doesn't work. Both parents abandon the child, and Robert goes on living with both pairs of grand parents. While his father belongs to the 1968 generation that rebels against their fathers he falls in love with the neighbor's's daughter Laura.
Henry is alone in a silent and darkened apartment, anxious and waiting by the phone, as his small child sleeps. Finally, a call. His wife Claire is on the other side of the world on a beach at a luxury resort, drunk, also in the dark, but apparently with another man. An adulterous affair, or a life in danger? In the harrowing wait and frantic calls that follow, is it his marriage, his wife or his sanity that is most under threat? The telephone line is the single fragile thread that connects them. All Henry can do is to hang onto that phone.
Eleven young people live in a city. It is midsummer. This is the starting point of the escalation of seemingly harmonious relationships. A postmodern urban fairy tale about loneliness of dependency. About the question of what is greater, freedom or love.
