Hanne (2018)

Even during her farewell party, chief secretary Hanne Dührsen learns that her longtime boss has died in a car accident. Despite the shock, she tries to remain professional and gets through her send-off without mentioning his death. The next morning, the newly retired Hanne hands the keys to her apartment to a painting company and takes the train to Wilhelmshaven, where she finally hopes to have her varicose veins removed at a clinic. But the long-planned operation does not go ahead: Dr. Hamed, her treating physician, explains that preliminary tests revealed abnormalities in her blood count that could indicate acute myeloid leukemia. Unwilling to commit to a diagnosis, and with further laboratory tests needed over the weekend, he asks the shaken Hanne to return the following Monday so they can discuss the results together. Hanne then decides to stay in Wilhelmshaven and checks into a nearby hotel. Despite her doctor’s recommendation, she searches online for information about the potential diagnosis and struggles to keep her composure. During a phone call with her friends, however, she says nothing about the news, and at first she does not want to burden her son with her worries either. That very evening, at a bar, she confides in Uli, a lingerie saleswoman. The two very different women become friends and decide to go out on the town together. Their night ends in a drunken stupor. Over breakfast the next morning, as they nurse their hangovers, Hanne spots the name of her former teenage sweetheart, Heiner, on a company vehicle outside her hotel-room window. She decides to call him, and they arrange to meet at the premises of Heiner’s construction company. Over lunch together, they reminisce about the past, and Hanne kisses Heiner, who had initially mistaken her for another former girlfriend. After work, she accompanies him home, where they spend the night together, and Hanne then sneaks away. On Sunday morning, Hanne gets a call from her son Tim, who had tried to visit her at home without warning and found only the painting company’s workers there. She persuades him to come to Wilhelmshaven on the spur of the moment, where, over breakfast, he tells his mother that he is going to be a father. Torn between happiness for her son and the prospect that she may not live to see the birth of her first grandchild, Hanne becomes impatient and panicked. After Tim leaves, she decides to speak to Dr. Hamed. She takes a taxi to his private address, where he is dressed as a clown and entertaining children at a birthday party. The doctor tries to calm the agitated Hanne, but she finds it increasingly difficult to switch off. As she then walks home across the fields, she gets caught in a rain shower. She takes shelter in hunter Sveni’s raised hunting stand, and he then takes her to his farm and introduces her to his family. There, his grandmother gives her a recipe for a postpartum soup, which Hanne prepares later that night in the hotel kitchen with the help of the friendly receptionist Sophie, intending to freeze it for her unborn grandchild. The next morning, the doctor comes to see her. A split screen showing a serious Hanne on one side and an optimistic Hanne on the other leaves the diagnosis unresolved.