Der Spitzname (2024)

Anna and Thomas want to get married, so they have invited their family on a short trip to snowy Tyrol. To everyone’s surprise, Anna has made a career as an actress. Thomas is on the verge of being promoted to the board of directors of an American real estate company; to get the job, however, he has to pass a sensitivity training course, which sends him into a crisis. He calls the daughter he has with Anna “Paulchen,” a diminutive form of Paul, linking the film’s title, “Nickname,” to gender identity and the parents’ wishes regarding gender. Stephan arrives reluctantly and in a bad mood. No one except his wife, Elisabeth, knows that after an incident he lost his job as a professor of literature at the university. His wife Elisabeth is Thomas’s sister; for some time, alongside her reduced-hours teaching job, she has been secretly and skillfully supplementing the household budget by trading Bitcoin. Dorothea, the mother of Thomas and Elisabeth, is now married to René and has also had twins with him through a surrogate. René proves to be a helicopter parent. Also along are Stephan and Elisabeth’s children: 18-year-old Cajus and 17-year-old Antigone. Cajus has changed his first name to Harry without his parents’ knowledge. Antigone challenges the wedding party with topics of wokism, feminism, and nonbinary gender identity. Interpersonal crises and relationship entanglements—including a provocative act of vandalism carried out together by Elisabeth, Antigone, and Dorothea; Thomas’s sexting affair; and Stephan’s help with the content of Anna’s wedding vows—overshadow the family gathering. Before long, the planned wedding is in jeopardy.