Fischer sucht Frau (2018)

Years ago, after a quarrel, Alex cut off contact with his father, Fred, and moved from his hometown of Stresund, a small fishing village on the Baltic Sea, to Hamburg. Just as things are going really well for the IT professional there and he is planning to start his own IT company with his friend Stefan, a letter from the social welfare office changes everything. The agency tells him that from now on he must pay for his father’s care and support. Fred is in a wheelchair after an accident. But Alex urgently needs his savings for the company he is about to start, and besides, he sees no reason to pay for his father, so he returns to his old hometown to sort things out. There, however, he is confronted not only with the past—his father also seems not to have changed one bit. On the contrary, Fred is even more bad-tempered than before, and it doesn’t take long for them to start arguing again. Since Fred has driven away his caregiver and is completely helpless on his own, Alex nevertheless has to take over the caregiving for the time being. Firm in his resolve not to spend his money on his father’s care, he plans to sell the family home and put the old man in a nursing home, something Fred is naturally far from agreeing to. Selling the family home proves more difficult than expected, too. The effects of demographic change are evident, and the remote fishing village is in decline. Women are particularly scarce in town—a fact that has left a lasting mark on the reclusive fishermen. The only woman still available is Marie, Alex’s former teenage sweetheart, but she won’t give any of the “eligible” bachelors a chance. Not entirely out of the goodness of his heart—after all, he wants to sell the family home at a profit—Alex helps his old friends and organizes a speed-dating event to attract women and make Stresund appealing to newcomers. The idea does indeed bring in marriage-minded women from the city, but they flee as soon as they meet the fishermen, who turn up unwashed and in their usual work clothes and can barely get a word out. So Alex also takes the taciturn fishermen shopping for clothes and gives them flirting lessons, which ultimately pays off. As Alex becomes more involved in what is going on and stays in constant contact with the past, he increasingly feels that this is where he belongs, while Hamburg fades into the background. When he learns that the accident actually left his father paralyzed from the waist down and that he will need help for the rest of his life—a fact Fred had kept from him—the two slowly begin to grow close again. Fred suddenly becomes remarkably understanding: he agrees to sell the house, says he is willing to move into a nursing home, and encourages Alex to build his life in Hamburg. Just as a buyer has been found for the house and Alex is nearly on his way back to Hamburg, his father falls down the stairs at home and is admitted to hospital with serious injuries. There, the two finally achieve a genuine reconciliation, and Alex realizes that he belongs here, with his father and friends. The sale of the house is called off, and converting part of it into a holiday apartment is intended to help pay for his father’s care in the future. Marie, Alex’s former teenage sweetheart, is back at his side, and by now the fishermen have even managed, at a crucial moment and without his help, to “hook” themselves a partner—fisherman Ole realizes that he is attracted to men.