Kryger bleibt Krüger (2020)

Paul Krüger wants to spend his retirement with his friends in their housing estate, but he gets a rent increase because his home is to be modernized. He wonders how he will be able to afford it. While meeting his friends in the park, he receives an unexpected visit from the mayor of the Czech village of Krýgovice. She tells him that his aunt, who lived there, has died, and that he and his brother Emil, whom he has not seen for decades, have inherited Krýgovice’s old brewery. At first, he has no interest in it. His friends persuade him to go there at least once, pointing out the prospect of free beer for the rest of his life. The three arrive by commuter train, and the mayor picks them up. After visiting his aunt’s grave, they head to the small brewery, founded by Krüger’s great-grandfather in 1898. The brewery is the village’s largest employer, although business is no longer as good as it once was. The Chinese want to buy the entire site and close the brewery, and the staff are pinning all their hopes on Krüger. He could hire a managing director and, as a retiree, would not have to run the business himself. Krüger is not at all comfortable with the idea of a Chinese takeover. After a short time to think it over and a first taste of the beer, he decides to accept the inheritance. They plan to go to Prague the next day, see the notary, sort out the formalities, sell the brewery, and head home again. Krüger’s friend Ecki, a longtime beer expert, chats with Jiří, the son of the owner of the small hotel where they are staying. Jiří studied marketing but works in his mother’s business, and already has ideas for repositioning the brewery and making it successful again. Ecki is not convinced; he takes a more traditional view, though he finds Jiří’s ideas interesting if they could save the brewery. The next morning, at Notary Černý’s office in Prague, they discover that under his aunt’s last will, Krüger can inherit only together with his brother. But his brother has already declined. There is another condition, too: the brothers must reconcile and drink together from the “family tankard,” a large silver jug that is a family heirloom. As it turns out, Paul’s brother Emil has no permanent address. He only collects his mail from an address in Prague every few months. The contact there has only a vague idea of where Emil might currently be with his “traveling theater.” When Krüger and his friend Bernd find Emil, they discover that he runs a one-man traveling puppet theater and lives in an old but lovingly maintained showman’s wagon, which also houses his stage. When Emil sees his brother Paul for the first time in decades, he runs off and hides in the nearby spa. In a brief conversation, Emil makes it clear to Paul that he wants nothing to do with the inheritance or capitalism. Their father always put the work of running the brewery ahead of him, his son, which is why Emil wanted nothing to do with the brewery himself. Meanwhile, the Chinese delegation hoping to buy the brewery arrives at the inn in Krýgovice. Through Mian, the friendly interpreter, Ecki strikes up a conversation with the Chinese, and Jiří introduces him as one of Germany’s leading beer experts. They celebrate with the local beer, and the evening turns into a merry, drunken affair. Ecki and Jiří manage to drink the Chinese under the table before the auction scheduled for the next day. That evening, Paul Krüger and his brother Emil sit together in the showman’s wagon. Krüger tells him about his late wife, his daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter. Emil, by contrast, has only his puppets as “children,” and accuses Paul of appearing out of nowhere after decades and wanting the inheritance only to turn it into money. Bernd suffers a severe bout of lumbago after spending the night in the wagon and can barely move. Emil gives him a very old painkiller, which sends him into a drug-induced stupor, leaving him unable to drive. Paul begs Emil to drive him to Krýgovice at least, so they set off in the showman’s wagon, drawn by two horses. Ecki had thought he had incapacitated the Chinese by getting them drunk, so the auction would not be able to take place the next morning. Just as they are about to send away the auctioneer who has arrived, the Chinese emerge from the inn in top form, and the auction begins. Dressed to impress, Ecki bids against them. He and Jiří bluff, claiming that Ecki is Herr Eckhardt Pichler, owner of the Pichelhofer breweries, one of Germany’s leading brewery companies. The mayor is in the room too, but keeps quiet. Ecki wins the auction for 780,000 euros, but he has to pay 10 percent of the amount by that evening; otherwise, the auction will be invalid. Paul and Emil arrive in the horse-drawn wagon just after the auction ends and hear the result. Emil, who had intended to leave again immediately, is surrounded by children who want to see his puppet show. Paul presses him to at least take a look at the brewery he had hated and wanted nothing to do with since his youth. He shows Emil around and explains once again how important the brewery is to the village, but Emil says it brought him nothing but misery. Their father was interested only in the business, never in him, and when Emil refused to join the brewery, his father threw him out. His father died shortly afterward, and their aunt had to take over the brewery. The brothers fall out. In the postwar period, Paul fled to Germany with his mother, while Emil and their father, who did not want to leave the brewery, stayed behind. They accuse each other of having abandoned the other. Meanwhile, Mian, the Chinese delegation’s interpreter, discovers that Ecki is not the brewery owner he claimed to be. The auction will be held again the next day if the brothers have not accepted the inheritance by then. As Paul wanders around the village, memories of his childhood come back to him. In black-and-white flashbacks, we see him and his mother being forced to leave as part of the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans. Meanwhile, Emil hitches up his showman’s wagon and leaves the village. Ecki and Bernd learn that, a little over 30 years ago, Emil had an affair with Tereza, the innkeeper, and that her son Jiří is also Emil’s son. Paul catches up with his brother and tells him that he is Jiří’s father. In his son’s name, he asks Emil to accept the inheritance after all, so the family can keep running the brewery. Emil is still stubborn. He has only just learned that Jiří is his son and needs time to come to terms with it. Meanwhile, the auction starts again. Just before it ends, Paul and Emil burst in and announce that they have decided to take over the brewery after all. The auctioneer, the notary, and the Chinese react angrily to all the back-and-forth, and the auction is postponed by another day. The clause requiring them to drink together from the family beer tankard still stands. Emil thinks he still has it, but the box it was supposed to be in is empty. After Emil and his son Jiří talk things through by the village pond, Emil remembers that, in a fit of anger long ago, he threw the tankard into that very pond. The next morning, Jiří dives for the beer tankard and actually finds it. They drink together, thereby fulfilling the final condition in their aunt’s will, and the papers are drawn up. The original plans to sell the brewery are abandoned, and Jiří will take it over, keeping it in the family. The Chinese leave, and the village celebrates. Paul still has no idea what he will do next in Berlin. At Emil’s insistence, he is to take the family tankard, made of sterling silver, and sell it, which will keep him going for a while. Krüger, Ecki, and Bernd return to Berlin with a crate of their beer.