Kleine Ziege, sturer Bock (2015)

Twelve-year-old Mai lives in Munich with her mother Julia, a successful opera singer. She has never met her father, and her mother has always told her that the two of them manage just fine on their own. So Mai is all the more upset when Julia one day tells her that she plans to marry her boyfriend, who has already moved in with his sons. Mai rebels against this and, in protest, says she wants to live with her father. She nags her mother about it until Julia finally agrees, convinced that her daughter will be back within a week at most. Mai’s father, Jakob, lives in Hamburg and gets by as an Elvis Presley impersonator and through odd jobs. He knows nothing about his daughter’s existence and is completely surprised when Julia calls to tell him that Mai is coming to stay with him. Since he has just taken a job as a courier driver, transporting a valuable breeding ram through Denmark and Sweden to Norway, he decides to take Mai along on the trip. When Jakob picks Mai up at the airport, she is disappointed. She had imagined her father as a wealthy villa owner, not the obviously poor man standing in front of her in worn-out clothes and driving a nearly wrecked van. She is not at all keen on the idea of driving to Norway with the sheep in the cargo area. Nevertheless, she goes along because she does not want to lose the power struggle with her mother. At first, Mai responds to Jakob’s attempts to get to know her with hostility and defensiveness. It is only after he saves her from drowning while she is swimming in a lake—and then wants to send her home because of it—that she opens up, and the two grow closer. Later, Mai gets her first period in a gas station restroom. She initially panics, but Jakob manages to calm her down. In the excitement, however, she has sent her mother a text message mentioning the blood but not explaining why it is there, so Julia immediately sets off for Norway. Using an app on Mai’s phone, she tracks them down and plans to take Mai back to Munich with her. But Mai and Jakob eventually persuade her to let the two of them finish their journey together.