Die Drei von der Müllabfuhr - Mission Zukunft (2020)

Garbage collector Werner Träsch is out on his rounds again with his colleagues Ralle Schieber and Tarik Büyüktürk when they witness a “Fridays for Future” demonstration in a schoolyard. Sixteen-year-old Dennis Kruse is leading the protest and behaves rudely toward Träsch, who slaps him. Unfortunately, a student films it on their phone and posts it online, with consequences. Werner Träsch’s boss, Rüdiger Dorn, orders him to offer Dennis—the troubled student he slapped—a one-week work placement with him, as a kind of compensation. For Dennis, collecting garbage without pay is anything but fun, especially under Werner Träsch’s supervision. When Werner asks Dennis what he sees himself doing in the future, Dennis replies that Werner’s generation has made sure his generation has no future. At least he doesn’t want to push garbage bins around; that’s too insignificant. He wants to reforest the tropical rainforest, get rid of diesel fuel, and do everything Werner’s generation failed to do. “Big ambitions,” Werner Träsch remarks, “and without even graduating!”—since Dennis refuses to attend classes. After a clash with Dennis on their route, Dennis stops showing up for his placement. To everyone’s dismay, Werner and his colleagues also discover that Dennis has stolen money from their wallets. It turns out he took it to have the broken laptop of his classmate Selma Ercan repaired; he was responsible for damaging it. It is obvious that Selma means a lot to him. As time goes on, Dennis increasingly becomes part of Werner’s team, pays the men back the money he stole, and begins to open up. For instance, he tells them that his father is dead and that his mother won’t tolerate any backtalk. Dennis does not show up on his last day of the placement. His worried mother, Franziska, tells the men that he didn’t come home the night before. After his mother finds him on the street while searching for him, they quarrel again when she mentions that his late father’s company has gone bankrupt and that they can’t keep their house. She says the best thing would be to move in with Dennis’s grandparents in Ulm. Dennis is outraged that his mother has decided this so easily without consulting him, and runs away again. This time, he heads to Ralle and Tarik, who live together on an old ship. After an incident stemming from Werner’s difficulty getting over his wife’s death years earlier, things between Werner and Gabi Hertz are made right again. Werner even asks Gabi if she could imagine moving with him into an apartment that has just become available. Gabi is overjoyed. Meanwhile, Dennis gradually finds his feet again on the ship. He studies for his exams with Ralle Schieber, a computer-savvy trained mathematician, so that he can finally graduate after all. It becomes clear how deeply his father’s death weighs on him. “He knew everything, he always studied with me and believed in me,” Dennis tells Werner. Werner says he believes in him too. Dennis also makes peace with his mother when, in a long conversation, she assures him that he is the most important thing in her life and admits that she probably got some things wrong in the past. When Tarik tries to explain to Werner apologetically that he has been dating Werner’s daughter Annika for some time, Werner just waves him off and says he already knows. But Werner still has one task ahead of him: as the longest-serving employee, he has to give a farewell speech for Manne, who is retiring. Although he was afraid of this moment, he handles the task very well in his own way. And after the municipal sanitation department posts various videos online under the title “Mülle meets Future” to build a social media presence and reach young people, Werner suddenly has followers, and 27 people apply for a placement, hoping to do it with Werner’s team.