Der letzte schöne Tag (2011)

The anesthesiologist Sibylle Langhoff appears to be living a happy life with her husband Lars and their two children, Maike and Piet, but appearances are deceiving. The young woman is depressed and no longer knows what to do with her life. On a sunny day, she leaves 14-year-old Maike and 7-year-old Piet with friends and takes her own life. The next morning, her husband Lars, a landscape architect, receives an email Sibylle had scheduled to be sent later and finds her dead in a clearing in the woods. When he tells the children, they are initially deeply shocked. Maike learns that her mother killed herself and blames herself, but she also begins to question whether her mother loved her. She looks for a reason and thinks her father was having an affair with Petra, their helpful neighbor. Piet, by contrast, is told that his mother was simply ill. However, he hears rumors of suicide at school and begins to imagine his mother’s presence. Meanwhile, Lars prepares the funeral with his sister Ruth and suppresses his feelings of guilt. At Sibylle’s funeral, emotions spill over when Ruth reads a poem. At the same time, while playing hide-and-seek under his grandparents’ table, Piet learns that his mother killed herself. Later, when he confronts his father and sister about it and asks why, they both think there really was no reason. Eventually, the family of three finds its way back to normal life; Piet no longer sets four places at the dinner table, but only three.