Einsamkeit und Sex und Mitleid (2017)

The film alternates between scenes from the lives of 15 residents of a large city, who repeatedly collide in shifting combinations. Robert, a hobby beekeeper, lives with his wife Maschjonka and their daughters Swentja and Sonja in a row-house development. Their marriage has grown cold. The family is in the process of moving to a smaller apartment, where Robert cannot take his bees. He vents his frustration with life in an “anger room,” where you can recreate a scene from your life using props and then destroy it with cutting and stabbing weapons to get rid of negative energy. The anger room is run by Ecki, a former teacher who had to give up the profession he loved after being accused of sexually harassing a student—an incident he denies and is trying to work through in therapy. The student who triggered the accusation is, unbeknownst to Ecki, Robert’s 14-year-old daughter Swentja. She meets Mahmud, who makes her sexual propositions. Out of curiosity and boredom, Swentja initially accepts them; later, the two gradually develop a genuine interest in each other. Mahmud, who lives in precarious circumstances with his younger, precocious brother Faisal, was previously beaten up by Thomas, a racist police officer. Thomas, in turn, tries to win over his colleague Carla, who is tormented by an anxiety trauma caused by an incident at a refugee shelter, through constant demonstrations of paternal superiority. For former teacher Ecki, a product being removed from the range at his regular supermarket sparks a fit of rage that the store manager, Uwe, can only bring under control by calling in security guards. Uwe is separated from his wife Julia. While Uwe meets the self-assured artist Janine online and dates her—she had previously portrayed family man Robert as part of an exhibition project—Julia, who has decided to live as a single woman for a while, hires the escort Vincent to satisfy her sexual appetite. Vincent shares an apartment opposite Ecki’s with his girlfriend Vivian, who also works as a prostitute and is also being portrayed by Janine. One of Vivian’s clients is Johannes, a deeply religious teenager who is in love with Swentja and visits Vivian to come to terms with his budding sexuality, which deeply confuses him. Robert and Ecki become friends, and Robert gradually realizes that he is developing feelings for Ecki. Mahmud gets revenge on Thomas by faking a bomb attack against him, causing Thomas to suffer a lasting panic attack, which prompts his colleague Carla to turn away from him. Events take a dramatic turn when Ecki exploits the confusion arising from a physical altercation between Mahmud and Johannes at a playground where Swentja, Mahmud, and Johannes have met. He kidnaps Swentja’s little sister Sonja, whom Swentja was supposed to be looking after, in order to get revenge on Swentja. He later gives the girl sedatives and leaves her in an abandoned church, where Johannes finds her and takes her back to Robert’s family. As Robert is about to confess his love to Ecki, the latter accidentally learns that the former is Swentja’s father and kills him in a fit of rage. During the end credits, the subsequent fates of some of the people involved are briefly shown: Robert receives one final, posthumous tribute when the exhibition of Janine’s portraits of him becomes a success. Swentja and Mahmud find their way to each other, and Carla regains her self-confidence and returns to work at the refugee shelter.