Für den Unbekannten Hund (2007)

Bastian, a concrete worker’s apprentice, confesses to his buddy Maik that he killed a homeless man at a gas station, supposedly “just for fun.” But Maik ruthlessly exploits his knowledge of the crime and demands that Bastian break open an ATM for him. Bastian is caught and serves a prison sentence. On the very day Bastian is released, Maik demands hush money again. To escape the extortion, Bastian hides in the toilet of Maik’s regular pub, armed with a knife and intending to end the situation by force. But an accident leaves Bastian badly wounded by his own knife, at the hands of a drunken journeyman on the road. The stonemason journeyman Samarit pulls the knife out and thereby saves his life. As compensation, Bastian is now owed one wish. Seeing a chance to escape his blackmailer Maik, Bastian asks to be taken along on the journeymen’s travels. Bastian is allowed to join the “Tippelei” on a six-week trial, after which Festus’s journeymen’s brotherhood will decide whether he has proved himself sufficiently as a traveling journeyman to stay with them for the traditional three-year period of travel. Festus assigns the stonemason journeyman Samarit to accompany Bastian during these first days on the road and introduce him to the tough “life on the road.” But Bastian cannot cope with the rules and customs of the journeymen’s travels. At their very first shared construction site, the rebuilding of a church ruin, Bastian fails miserably: because of his carelessness, Samarit falls from the church roof and is seriously injured. While Samarit is still in the hospital, Festus tells the distraught Bastian that his traveling days are over. Bastian fears that if he returns to Wismar, he will be at the mercy of his blackmailer Maik again. He asks for a second chance and asks Festus about the mistakes he himself made while traveling. Festus tells him about Schmiege, a former traveling companion from whom he had parted after an argument, and who was beaten to death shortly afterward. Bastian is given a second chance and must now travel with the gruff Festus. On the road, Bastian has to prove himself and learn that being “on the road” has nothing to do with “coolness” and little to do with craftsmanship, but a great deal to do with one’s character and one’s capacity for tolerance and honesty. Bastian travels with Festus from place to place, from one experience to another: with Inke, the daring maker of journeymen’s clothes, who wants to get into bed with Bastian and her boyfriend all together; with Lemmy, the biker, from whose jealousy and powerful fists Bastian has to save himself and Festus; and with Leila, the biker’s girlfriend, who strips onstage with Bastian at a motorcycle gathering and once loved Festus—and still loves him. Bastian also changes outwardly. He has come to resemble Festus’s murdered buddy Schmiege. Festus has taken decisive steps to make that happen, using Schmiege’s old clothes, stored at a journeymen’s tailoring shop in Hamburg. By making Bastian a little like Schmiege again, Festus hopes to bring back his lost friend and atone for some of his guilt. Festus even teaches Bastian Schmiege’s journeymen’s songs. While they are walking together through an impenetrably swampy stretch of forest, Festus whistles Schmiege’s favorite song to him: “When We Had Recently Gone Missing.” Bastian knows the tune—from the “bum” at the gas station near Wismar. Only now does Bastian realize that he had killed Festus’s best friend Schmiege. After one last visit together to Leila and her motorcycle-club friends, Bastian acts on what he has realized: he takes off the journeymen’s clothes and confesses in writing to Festus that he was the one who killed his friend Schmiege. After Bastian initially flees, the two eventually meet: Festus intends to kill Bastian. A bitter fight breaks out on the grounds of the biker club, but in the end Festus, exhausted, embraces Bastian and finally forgives him. At a subsequent journeymen’s gathering, Festus even asks his traveling companions to admit Bastian permanently into the brotherhood. But Samarit has discovered that Bastian has a criminal record, which rules out his admission. Festus cannot get over this defeat and ends his travels. From then on, disappointed, dispirited, and disillusioned, he works in Samarit’s highly mechanized stonemasonry business. Bastian, however, keeps traveling alone; he has become almost indistinguishable from Schmiege, his former victim. His goal: to keep traveling and thereby continue the life journey Schmiege was forced to leave unfinished.