Der Wunschzettel (2018)

Frankfurt am Main, one day before Christmas Eve. Thirty-eight-year-old single Pauline Schwebe looks gloomily toward the upcoming holidays with her family. After a failed relationship that drove her into financial ruin, the municipal enforcement officer has lived alone for many years and is considered a difficult prospect by her parents and siblings. While working, she finds a handwritten wish list on a traffic-light pole and discovers a kindred spirit in the person who wrote it: seven-year-old Leo Golombeck wishes for a “lonely soul” to visit for Christmas, celebrate Christmas Eve with his family, and bring gifts for the children in return. When Pauline turns up at the Golombecks’ home with the note in her hand, she meets Leo’s older sister, Lotte, and his father, Daniel, a self-employed carpenter who has been raising the children alone since his wife died of cancer. The family is poor, but Pauline takes to them immediately, and Leo believes that Pauline is the fulfillment of his Christmas wish. During a subsequent visit to her parents, things come to a head. Confronted once again with her concerned parents’ reproaches, Pauline pretends to be in a relationship with Daniel. When Wanda and Birger unexpectedly invite their long-awaited future son-in-law to Christmas, Pauline feels backed into a corner. She decides to invite the Golombecks to the family Christmas celebration at her parents’ house—on the condition that Daniel play the part of her boyfriend. Once there, the two must pass themselves off as a couple and field the family members’ curious questions, while some of those relatives have worries of their own. Pauline’s career-minded brother Benjamin and his equally ambitious and successful wife Bettina have been trying to start a family for some time. Bettina, however, is concealing from her husband that she is secretly taking the contraceptive pill to prevent a pregnancy. Meanwhile, the youngest sibling, Caro, has found family happiness with Jon, an Icelander, and her two children from previous relationships. She wants another child with Jon, but he does not dare tell her that he is infertile. Wanda and Birger are planning to move out of their house and hope one of their children will take it over. They announce this wish on Christmas Day. After Leo chokes on a cookie following Christmas dinner and loses consciousness, Daniel takes him to the hospital, where the whole family soon gathers. Leo is released unharmed, but after the attending doctor privately greets Pauline’s father, she becomes convinced that Birger is seriously ill. When she confronts him the following morning, she can no longer keep up her own pretense and admits to the family that she lied and made up her relationship with Daniel. In return, Birger reveals that it is not he but Wanda who is ill, and that she will undergo chemotherapy on the Baltic Sea coast. Her mother then encourages Pauline to talk things over with Daniel and give their relationship a chance. Back at the Golombecks’ home, the two finally kiss. A year later, the two have moved into Wanda and Birger’s house together with Leo and Lotte, and the family gathers there once again to celebrate Christmas. Bettina is now pregnant with Benjamin’s child, and Caro has moved to Iceland with Jon and the children. They travel back for the family celebration, as do Birger and Wanda, whose illness has taken its toll. When Pauline passes the same traffic-light pole as the year before, she finds a note from Leo, just as she did a year earlier. It reads: “Thank you, dear Santa Claus. No wishes this year. Yours, Leo.”