Ein Mann seiner Klasse (2024)

Kaiserslautern, 1994. Ten-year-old Christian, his older brother Benny, and his younger sister Laura live in precarious circumstances. Their father, Ottes, is a furniture mover who can be unpredictable when drunk, and the children and his wife, Mira, who is pregnant again, suffer as a result. Despite Christian’s recommendation for an academic-track secondary school, Ottes wants him to attend a lower-track secondary school and learn a “proper trade”; Mira, on the other hand, wants her son to be able to take advantage of his opportunities. When Ottes beats Mira again, she loses the baby; a tumor in her abdomen had already been diagnosed. Ottes then loses his job because of thefts, but is too proud to apply for welfare or accept help from Mira’s sister, Juli. Mira had said she would leave him, but cannot bring herself to do it. A little later, she dies. Her death plunges Laura into depression, and Christian is the only one who can comfort her. The three children are taken in by Aunt Juli, who also has to care for her own baby. Christian remains attached to his father, whom Juli thinks little of. Thanks to Juli’s forceful intervention against the youth welfare office, Christian attends the academic-track secondary school and befriends a Turkish boy there. The family court grants Juli custody of the children, despite Ottes’s vehement protest; Ottes’s father, Horst, even uses force to intimidate Juli. Mira’s other sister, Ella, who married into a higher social class, tries to interest Christian in culture. She takes him to the opera, gives him newspapers to read, and holds out the prospect of an internship in a newspaper’s editorial department. But Christian cannot get much out of it and eventually rejects her efforts. During a visit to an outdoor swimming pool, Christian’s Turkish friend, unaware that Christian cannot swim, playfully pushes him into a pool. Christian goes under and is admitted to hospital unconscious. When Juli sees how worried Ottes is about his son, she offers Christian the chance to move in with his father, and he gladly accepts. But before long, Ottes falls back into his usual habits. He misses Christian’s first football match for the club because he gets drunk at his regular pub, and his negligence also leads to an apartment fire. When Christian is finally supposed to move in with Ottes, the boy abruptly stops by the roadside with his luggage, signaling that he does not want to move after all. Ottes understands the hint, and they embrace warmly.