Frühstück mit einer Unbekannten (2007)

Laurens is a senior civil servant in the Federal Ministry of Finance, reporting directly to the Federal Minister of Finance. He has made great strides in his career and is a smoothly functioning cog behind the scenes of the political circus. Laurens lives among numbers and works for work’s sake (“When I’m not working, I’m working”). Small talk is not his strong suit; he tends to stick to sharing facts (“In fact, use of public transport has increased by about 27.4% over the last three years”). Private life and romantic relationships are foreign concepts to him and have no place in his life—a state of affairs that makes him uneasy but ultimately seems unchangeable. One morning, he sits down beside the pretty Gina in a crowded café to sort through his papers and thoughts and have a coffee for breakfast. They have a trivial conversation. Gina is a midwife and has just come through an exhausting day at work. They are both tired and yawn, hardly an ideal start to a romance. Nevertheless, by chance, their conversation continues outside the café, and they arrange to meet. They both show up for the date only because they want to cancel it. Beforehand, Gina had told her roommate she was afraid the man would be “much too old” for her. A persistent waiter and the fact that they are both hungry mean that they end up sharing a meal after all. When they happen to run into the Minister of Finance, he invites Gina to accompany Laurens to the G8 conference in Heiligendamm. Gina accepts and travels to Heiligendamm with the official motorcade, wearing shoes borrowed from her best friend. In Heiligendamm, everything is polished to a shine and cut off from the world’s problems, which were supposed to be the summit’s subject. The summit participants resign themselves to the problems of global warming and global poverty instead of struggling to find solutions. Gina, however, cannot bear this indifference, and her utterly honest but thoughtless attempts at conversation throw the summit into chaos on the slippery ground of high society. Several times, she reminds the German Minister of Finance of the Millennium Goals and, as a voter, urges him to do everything in his power to ensure they are met, despite being under threat. Among summit participants smoothed down by the political process, she is like a grain of sand in the machinery: she brings up uncomfortable facts and forces them to confront the reality of the world. The scandal comes when she interrupts the Chancellor’s speech at the farewell dinner and bluntly accuses her and her colleagues of inaction in the face of the 30,000 children who die every day as a result of poverty. Gina therefore has to leave the G8 summit, and Laurens, who stays behind, is also sent home at the Finance Minister’s next working meeting. But Gina’s passionate appeal seems to have had some effect. On the final day, the Chancellor unexpectedly calls a working session of the eight heads of government on the Millennium Goals.