Die Gänseprinzessin (2022)
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Directors
Cast
Mina Christ, Leslie Malton, Regula Grauwiller, Johann von Bülow, Jascha Baum, Zoran Pingel, Mo Ahmadi
After a prince vanishes, his prank-loving sister is banished for making people laugh in a kingdom where her father has decreed perpetual mourning.
The story
Princess Apollonia, known as Polly, loves jokes and pranks, but her father, King Klaus, cannot tolerate laughter and has decreed perpetual mourning since Crown Prince Nepomuk disappeared four years earlier. At an annual memorial for her brother, Polly makes her ladies-in-waiting laugh, and the laughter spreads through the crowd. The furious king banishes her. His grief then leaves Queen Kunigunde in charge, and she imposes increasingly severe restrictions, eventually imprisoning children for laughing in public. Elsewhere, adventurous Leif frees resistance fighter Hagen from the king’s men. Pursued by guards, they escape with help from an old sorceress, who leads them to her forest hut, where a teenage girl lives among many geese.
Full plot (contains spoilers)
The cheerful Princess Apollonia “Polly,” who loves cracking jokes and playing pranks, has a hard time: her father, King Klaus, cannot tolerate laughter and has decreed perpetual mourning throughout the kingdom ever since Crown Prince Nepomuk disappeared without a trace four years earlier. Things come to a head when Polly makes her two ladies-in-waiting laugh at the annual memorial ceremony marking the day her brother vanished, and the laughter spreads through the assembled people. Beside himself with anger, the king banishes his daughter. But then he grieves for her so deeply that Queen Kunigunde has to take charge of the kingdom’s affairs. She tightens the restrictions more and more, until even children are imprisoned for laughing in public. Meanwhile, the adventurous Leif travels across the kingdom and witnesses the king’s men arresting Hagen, a resistance fighter. Leif frees him, and they are pursued, but manage to escape the guards with the help of an old sorceress. She leads Leif and Hagen to a magical clearing in the forest, where she lives in a simple hut with a teenage girl, whom she introduces as her daughter, and many geese. The girl and Hagen soon take a liking to each other, while she and Leif feel a mutual dislike. He looks down on her lowly occupation; she despises his boasting. But he cannot leave the hut without being pursued by the king’s guards, so he reluctantly agrees to tend the geese. By chance, one night Leif and the girl recognize each other as siblings. He is Nepomuk, and she is Polly, who has found refuge with the sorceress. Polly urges Nepomuk to show himself to their parents, which is very difficult for him. He had run away only because he disliked life at court. But he realizes she is right: only he can make the kingdom joyful again. So they set off for the castle with the geese, who turn out to be the enchanted, imprisoned children. At the feast celebrating their reunion, the king hands over the rule of the kingdom to Polly, who henceforth brings joy to the realm together with Hagen. Nepomuk sets off into the world again in search of adventure.
Genres
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