Arschkalt (2011)

The film is set in northern Germany. Rainer Berg’s father founded and owned a factory that manufactured plate freezers and had been successful for decades. After Berg Senior retired, his son Rainer Berg took over as managing director. Unfavorable economic developments and mismanagement led to bankruptcy. Berg Senior sits in a nursing home, chain-smoking and unaware of the company’s decline. Rainer Berg is struggling with the failure and works as a delivery driver for a frozen-food company. He has not told his father, whom he loves and regularly visits at the nursing home, about the bankruptcy. Rainer Berg is a misanthrope who is surly and unfriendly toward his colleagues and customers. He has no friends or partner. When the company he works for runs into difficulties, its management sends the attractive Dutch manager Lieke van der Stock to the site. After Berg insults her chauvinistically within earshot, she assigns him the dim-witted but friendly Tobias Moerer. Berg is far from pleased, but keeping his job also depends on successfully training Moerer, so he trains him as a salesman. Moerer’s sister is in trouble herself: her hair salon is in financial debt because of Moerer. He, however, tries to meet life’s challenges with naive optimism. Gradually, the two very different men unexpectedly develop a kind of friendship. Berg’s father expects his son to celebrate his upcoming birthday at the old factory. When Berg is about to tell his father the truth, a caregiver tells him that his father has lung cancer and does not have long to live. To spare him, at the end of his life, the disappointment of learning that his life’s work has been destroyed, Berg grants his wish to hold a “company party” at the factory. With Lieke and Tobias’s help, he manages to recruit enough customers to act as extras, and the party at the factory—which has in fact been shut down—is a great success. Berg, who has fallen in love with Lieke, hints at his feelings shortly before she leaves. She returns to the Netherlands for three months to bury her grandmother and settle her affairs, and promises to come back to Berg. At the end, Tobias wins money on the radio, which he can use to save his sister’s hair salon.