Hin und weg (2014)

As every year, Hannes, Kiki, Michael, Mareike, Finn, and Dominik go on a bicycle tour. This year, Hannes and his wife Kiki decide where the trip will go. Starting in Frankfurt am Main, the tour is to take them to the seaside town of Ostend in Belgium. During the journey, the cyclists learn that this will be Hannes’s last trip. He has the incurable neurological disease ALS. Hannes has known about the diagnosis for some time, but said nothing because he did not want to burden his friends. Shaped by the course of the disease in his late father, he has decided to seek assisted dying in Belgium. This is met with incomprehension, and the bicycle tour threatens to turn into a disaster. As they ride, the friends gradually come to terms with Hannes’s wish to die. Tasks they set one another, and the completion of those tasks—for example, making a parachute jump or doing something illegal—lighten the mood. Michael is supposed to dress as a woman, and in doing so meets Bine. But Bine notices the mood and eventually bows out. For the final stretch of the journey, Hannes’s mother drives the friends in her car, because Hannes has grown weaker during the bike tour. When they arrive at their destination in Belgium, they learn that the doctor who was to carry out the assisted dying has been seriously injured in an accident. But even after this delay, Hannes sticks to his decision. A replacement doctor is found, and, in the presence of everyone, administers the injection to him. A year later, the friends meet again on the same beach—in the sand, the words “Hannes was here” are written.