Auf der Straße (2015)

Hanna Berger lives a secluded life with her husband, Walter, in a condominium in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel. One day, when she comes home, he is already sitting on the couch with a glass of wine. He complains that business at his wine shop has been poor, then suddenly collapses and suffers a fatal heart attack. Hanna leaves only a message on the answering machine for her daughter Elke, with whom she has had no contact for many years. Elke appears at the funeral but refuses to speak to her mother. Soon afterward, Hanna discovers that Walter had been hiding their financial situation from her for some time. He had stopped paying the bills and the installments on the apartment loan, and shortly before his death had taken out a new loan at extremely high interest. Their bank tells her that the apartment is soon to be auctioned off because her small pension is not enough to pay off the debts. Both the bank and her friend Gabriele advise her to go to the social services office. But her pride is too great, and after the apartment is cleared out, she ends up in a homeless shelter with only a few belongings. A staff member there also suggests that she go to social services. At last, Hanna goes there and learns what she already suspected: if she receives welfare benefits, the office will contact her daughter and may require her to provide support. Hanna wants to prevent that at all costs. And so her life on the streets begins—and she meets Mecki. The young woman has been homeless for many years, ever since falling out with her mother. Hanna comes to know the harsh realities of life on the streets: she lives on leftover food, sleeps under a bridge, and quarrels with another homeless person over a returnable bottle. Her attempts to find work are doomed to fail. No one wants to hire her without a permanent address. Meanwhile, Elke has become restless. Her father's death has sent her on an “emotional roller coaster.” She gets into an argument with her boyfriend Lars, with whom she successfully runs a restaurant. At the beginning of their relationship, she had told him that her parents were already dead. Her daughter, too, knows nothing of the grandmother's existence. Elke goes to her mother's former apartment and learns from a neighbor that she had been forced to move out. She sets out to find her mother and finds her on the street with Mecki and other homeless people. Elke offers to take Hanna in temporarily, but Hanna is too proud and turns her down. This leads to an argument with Mecki, who cannot understand Hanna's attitude. When Hanna is attacked the following night and can barely endure life on the streets any longer, she finally goes to Elke's, and Elke takes her in. The two women soon have an argument, however: Elke never felt loved by her mother. When she was 18 and expecting a child, Hanna pressured her to have an abortion. But it never came to that—Elke suffered a miscarriage and then broke off contact with her mother completely. Hanna, on the other hand, had wanted to protect her daughter, because she herself had become pregnant far too young—with Elke. Since Hanna's parents were dead and she could expect no support, she felt completely overwhelmed and, until her relationship with her daughter broke down, constantly felt that she was not a good mother. Hanna abruptly leaves the apartment. Lars is beside himself, and he and Elke argue. Lars accuses Elke of having already neglected her father. He fears that she will now lose her mother as well, and that their daughter will lose her grandmother. Hanna is deeply disappointed. She takes an overdose of tranquilizers and is just about to throw herself off a bridge when Mecki finds her at the last moment. Hanna comes to in the hospital and makes up with Elke. Together, they then find Hanna a small apartment on the outskirts of Hamburg.