Das Glück ist ein Vogerl (2020)

The film is set during Advent in Salzburg. Franz Brandstätter is a music and guitar teacher in his late forties. He is bored with his job and secretly dreams of a career as a rock guitarist. His marriage to Linn is in crisis, and his pubescent daughter Julie barely speaks to him or his wife. In the middle of the Christmas rush, Franz witnesses a car accident in which an older man is fatally injured. The accident victim, Egon Stachowiak, had been on his way to the Amadé care center in search of his childhood sweetheart, Amalia “Mali” Hirsch, who is in a persistent vegetative state. He wanted to apologize to her after decades. When Franz’s wife drags him to Sebastian von Schöneck’s self-help seminar, “The Elevator to Happiness,” to save their marriage, Franz encounters Egon’s ghost. From then on, Egon’s ghost haunts Franz, although Egon is visible only to him. Egon cannot explain this himself, especially since, as a former physicist, he does not believe in his own metaphysical existence. After Linn threatens to divorce him, Egon suggests that Franz help him awaken his childhood sweetheart Mali from her coma. In return, he promises to help Franz save his marriage. After several failed attempts, including one using perfumes, Egon and Franz finally manage to reach Mali by singing the Viennese song “Das Glück is a Vogerl.” Mali dies in the hospital, and Egon and Mali go together into the light. Meanwhile, Franz manages to impress Linn by making his dream come true: he joins the band of Tessa, a nurse he had met at the care center, and writes Linn a love song, which is performed at a concert. Franz also begins to take his work as a teacher seriously.