Mittagsstunde (2022)

Forty-seven-year-old university lecturer Ingwer Feddersen, who still lives in a shared flat in Kiel with Ragnhild and Claudius, decides to take a career break to care for his elderly parents. After a long absence, he therefore returns to the North Frisian village of Brinkebüll, where he grew up. His father, Sönke, now has difficulty walking, while his mother, Ella, is becoming increasingly demented and often wanders off. Village life has also changed considerably since then. Fewer people live there, and hardly anyone visits Sönke’s once-lively village pub anymore—apart from a line-dancing group led by Ingwer’s school friend Heiko. In flashbacks, Ingwer remembers growing up there from the 1960s to the 1980s: a time when much of the village community gathered at his father’s pub, when large farm machines were acquired, and when smaller farms eventually had to give way to larger ones. He remembers Marret, who had an intellectual disability and was musical, and how, as a child, he learned that she was not his sister at all but his mother. She had become pregnant by a stranger, Thomas, a land-surveying engineer, and one day she disappeared. He also remembers telling Sönke and Ella that he was going to attend high school and later study in Kiel—much to Sönke’s displeasure, as he would rather have seen Ingwer behind the counter at the village pub. In the present, Sönke and Ella are preparing to celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary. After Ella wanders off once again and Ingwer finds her sitting on a bench in the cemetery, she tells him in conversation that Marret is not Sönke’s daughter at all, but the result of a long-running affair with the village teacher, Christian Steensen. Shortly before the celebration, Sönke dies while listening to music. After the funeral, Ingwer finds Ella a place in a care home. His school friend Heiko takes over the village pub and opens a saloon there. Ingwer leaves his past behind and sets off toward a new future.