Die lange Welle hinterm Kiel (2012)

In 1990, two Sudeten Germans happen to be traveling on the same cruise ship in Indonesia: the successful businesswoman Margarete Kämmerer and the medical professor Martin Burian. Their encounter stirs a thirst for revenge in Margarete. She tells her nephew Sigi, who is traveling with her, how cruelly Martin had had her husband executed at the end of the war in 1945. Sigi tells Sylva about it; she is Martin’s daughter-in-law, and he has fallen in love with her. Sylva, in turn, hears a different story from Martin: Margarete’s husband had been a terrible Nazi during the war and had shot Martin’s brother in the back, among others. The retaliatory action against the Nazis had been just. As Sigi and Sylva grow closer, the divide between Margarete and Martin seems for a long time impossible to bridge; Margarete even plans a murder. But when Martin finally makes contact, both of them soon calm down. In their last conversation, they agree that the young people, who did not live through the war years, can no longer understand them. The next morning, the two have disappeared, and Sylva finds only Martin’s walking stick by the railing. An overturned chair suggests that they jumped overboard together. After some time, the steward is convinced by this account and does not launch an investigation. As it turns out, not only was Martin terminally ill, but Margarete also had cancer in its final stage.