Eine fremde Tochter (2022)

Oliver lives with his boyfriend Felix in a spacious apartment in Hamburg. He used to be a successful decathlete and was married to Carolin until he separated from her after coming out several years ago. He has little contact with his 15-year-old daughter Alma until Carolin is fatally injured in a traffic accident. Alma’s aunt Franziska, who lives in Hong Kong, would prefer Alma to move in with Oliver rather than with her grandparents. Alma is persuaded, but living together brings problems. On the one hand, Alma is still grieving; on the other, reservations about Oliver’s homosexuality play a part, and she seems to resent her father in particular. At school, Alma meets Johannes, whose parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses, and this leads the teenager, who is searching for direction, to study the Bible more closely. Oliver is unhappy about this, and he brings it up provocatively at a get-together. Felix, by contrast, tries to show understanding for both of them. As Alma develops a close bond with him and he criticizes Oliver for his behavior, the relationship between the two men increasingly runs into trouble. Oliver tries to improve his relationship with his daughter through their shared enthusiasm for sports. He trains with her and, at Alma’s request, also pushes for the dismissal of her coach, who has relationships with his trainees. As the father-daughter relationship improves, Felix eventually moves out after repeated arguments with Oliver. One day, when Alma sees Felix with another man, she tells Oliver and, for her birthday, asks him never to meet up with other men again. He acknowledges her wish but does not promise anything. Besides his daughter’s unsettling request, Oliver has other worries. For some time he has been living with severe hip pain, which has gotten worse from training with Alma. He has been treating it with painkillers for quite a while and will soon have to undergo surgery. Eventually, he goes out on the town one more time and picks up a man with very long blond hair. The next morning, when Alma sees him lying face down and covered up in Oliver’s bed, looking like a woman, she goes back to her room satisfied.