Max Poerting

Klaus Gremme, a retired instructor with the combat swimmers at the Baltic Sea, sets off for Lake Constance to meet his son Thomas and his grandchildren. They don't know anything about him because Klaus left his wife and Thomas when the boy was still very young. Klaus takes up residence with Mona, a single mother whose house is across the street from Thomas'. The reunion with his son turns into a fiasco, but Klaus doesn't give up and develops an elaborate plan to win Thomas and his family over after all. In the coming weeks, however, the ex-fight swimmer constantly clashes with his esoteric, pacifist landlady Mona. She and her children, the overweight Linus and Claire, who has Down syndrome, slowly grow fond of the lone warrior. In the end, the rapprochement with his own family seems to have failed. But Klaus may have found a new, completely different family in this search.

On December 23, you can meet Santa Claus almost anywhere - even on the Berlin-Bayern long-distance bus. But driver Robert, himself wearing a Santa hat, doesn't promise any presents. 25-year-old Felix, a new Berliner, is on his way to snowy Mittenwald to celebrate Christmas with his family and girlfriend. He is already planning his personal present: a marriage proposal to his girlfriend Saskia. But shortly before departure, a mishap occurs - the engagement ring goes missing. Felix's seatmate Hanna, who is also traveling to Mittenwald to spend the party with her grandmother, has just ended a relationship. The freedom-loving Hanna begins a casual flirtation with Felix, of all people, who is in a long-term relationship and doesn't at all fit in with her prey scheme. Over the next few years, their paths cross again on the Christmas drive home.

For Thomas, it’s all about sport. The young high-jumper sticks to the uncompromising training and dietary regime at a sports camp. We soon learn that this is creating an unhealthy situation – to put it mildly. It’s clear from the start that there’s something very wrong in this boy’s life. Not only does he regularly lock himself away to self-harm, or practise leaving a voice-mail for his absent father – the military-style control exercised by his mother, Margot, is absolutely suffocating. Both for Thomas, and for the viewer.