Nicole Max
It’s the early 1950s and little Franzi is growing up in the small Austrian town of Judenburg. Her oppressive family home is dominated by her feverish and mentally ill father, who is rigid and unpredictable. Her father, who regularly delivers halves of pork for the butcher, spent several years in the French Foreign Legion in Morocco, Algeria and Syria – a period which he partly glorifies but which still also haunts him. Franzi immerses herself in this world by looking at an abundance of beguiling yet disturbing photographs taken at the time by her father. Her own childish fantasy realm of fairy tales and picture books soon intermingle with nightmares as reality merges with imagination, war, horror and beauty.
Bank manager Frank and writer Patrizia meet by coincidence again and again at the airport. They commute between Dusseldorf and Paris, but behind their travels are two fateful stories. Frank wants to complete the business of his life, Patrizia visits her lover, who is in a coma since a car accident. For both life comes out of joint and they each suffer heavy losses. What connects them is the search for hold, a listener, the need to be needed and the hope that there is a beginning in each end.
Christmas approaches and the Lévesque family has once again gathered for their traditional celebration. But this time there is a mixture of emotions running through each person. The patriarch of the family suffers from a combination of Parkinson’s Disease and heart failure. His life reduced in every way, the end approaches and there are unhappy memories of his once violent and authoritarian past. But his wife, ten children and many grandchildren try to maintain a semblance of the Christmas season.
Five friends spend their holidays on a faraway island in the sea. On the last day of the holidays, out of the blue, Björn informs his friends that he will not return home but intends to stay in this paradise forever. There is no sign of life from Björn after that. His best friend Meikel is very concerned about the mysterious disappearance - but nobody cares and no one helps him in his search for the lost friend.
The story beginns on 24 October 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis. The Second World War with its hardships and bombs...
With the American Dream set in their minds, two pathetic gangsters, one Luxembourgish, the other German, go through various trials and tribulation in the South of Luxembourg.
