Fuchs im Bau (2020)

After his son Felix dies by suicide, teacher Hannes Fuchs cuts off contact with his bandmates, with whom he had performed as a drummer. He starts a new job teaching teenagers in prison, where the unconventional teacher Elisabeth Berger takes him under her wing. Her unorthodox teaching methods have long been a thorn in the prison director Vanicek’s side. Berger does not give her students homework, favors art therapy, and makes spontaneous visits to the prison kitchen to bake apple strudel together. The guard Weber also tries to win Fuchs over and hasten Berger’s departure, since she causes too much unrest among the inmates. Fuchs’s attempts to bring more structure to Berger’s lessons with assignments and questionnaires are nipped in the bud by her. On his second day, a violent incident occurs among the students when Berger briefly leaves him alone with the class. The androgynous Samira hits her classmate Sala in the face after he sexually harasses her. She once beat her father into a coma, and has not said a word since. To protect the girl from being committed to a psychiatric hospital, Tara Ketabi from the youth court assistance service asks Fuchs to gain her trust. He secretly smuggles paint into the cell of Samira, who tends to self-harm, so she can continue with art therapy. When Berger suffers a fainting spell, the prison director advises her to slow down. But she refuses to give up or share responsibility for running the classes, so that Weber cannot gain control over the students. Berger steals Fuchs’s master key to discredit him, then gets drunk at home. Fuchs visits her and confronts her, and the two make peace. Together, they pry a door and its frame out of the wall of Berger’s apartment to show the students what a special feeling it would be to be released one day. After Samira tries to stab herself with a paintbrush Fuchs smuggled into her cell, following a visit from her mother to the prison, Berger takes the blame and is suspended. Weber had earlier tipped off the press about the incident. Art classes are then discontinued, and Fuchs takes charge of the class. As she says goodbye, Berger advises him to “do the right thing.” When Samira sets fire to the infirmary and Fuchs is able to rescue her, he confronts her mother at the funeral for her deceased father. It emerges that the girl’s parents had given their daughter female hormones so that she would develop into a normal girl. To Weber’s annoyance, Fuchs resorts to an unconventional teaching method and has the students make music on improvised instruments, starting with the disillusioned Sala. He also insists that Samira be taken off the infirmary and given a medical examination. While Berger rides her motorcycle to the sea, Fuchs eventually establishes regular music lessons.