Mit der Tür ins Haus (2019)

Nora is a single mother who lives with her teenage son, Linus, in her childhood home near Frankfurt am Main. She works at a travel agency, looks after her friends, and helps out at Eintracht’s local football supporters’ club. With her birthday approaching and things once again going wrong for Nora, her parents unexpectedly turn up at her door. They moved to Iceland years ago and opened a guesthouse there. What at first seems like a brief birthday visit gradually becomes a major source of stress for Nora. Her daily routine is turned upside down. Her mother starts rearranging things around the house to suit herself. She cooks Icelandic dishes, the unexpected guests create a queue for the bathroom in the morning, and Nora has to sleep on the couch. There is no sign that her parents will be leaving anytime soon. Nora’s friend Feli gives her a massage as a present, hoping it will help her relax, but instead Khalid—a holiday fling of Feli’s—suddenly shows up at the door. Feli’s husband mustn’t find out, so Nora has to put him up too. On top of that, tensions arise with Linus, who sees Nora as a strict mother who always sticks to the rules and forbids him everything. Linus gets along quite well with Khalid, and the two even go to the castle festival, despite Nora having forbidden Linus to go. Nora follows them there. Khalid persuades her to dance, and they share their first kiss. After they return, Nora gets into an argument with her parents, who accuse her of wanting to get rid of them even though they are allowed to stay here for free. Nora tries to drive her parents out of the house by bringing in vermin and a smelly fish, which eventually results in them staying with a neighbour. Linus eventually decides to move in with his father. It is finally revealed that Nora’s parents went bankrupt in Iceland and that her father, Wolfgang, has now taken out a mortgage on the house. While tidying up, Nora finds her father’s pills, which suggest that he has Lewy body dementia. This eventually leads to a heart-to-heart with her mother. It also explains why Nora’s father often wanders around and sees things that aren’t there. When Wolfgang goes missing, Nora and Khalid find him by the cliffs, which he knows like the back of his hand. They take him to the clinic, where he tells them that he has arranged a small apartment with care services for himself and his wife. Nora and Khalid have by now become a proper couple when the doorbell suddenly rings and Khalid’s parents are standing outside.