Nightlife (2020)

At the center of the story are two friends, Milo and Renzo, and Berlin, mostly at night. The young Milo works as a bartender, living by night and often waking up the next morning beside a woman he doesn’t know. Milo knows he can’t go on like this and, after looking out the window in daylight and seeing ordinary people going about their daily lives, begins to long for a “more normal,” “respectable” life with a wife and children. This might be possible if Milo’s best buddy Renzo weren’t a chaotic troublemaker who regularly gets himself into trouble through his actions. The bank that is supposed to help Milo realize his respectable life plans is also standing in his way, even though the somewhat eccentric banker Heiko speaks up for him. Faced with his buddy in trouble, Renzo takes the initiative, nearly setting off a catastrophe. Renzo takes matters into his own very personal hands and—once again—gets involved in a shady deal, in which three kilos of cocaine promptly go missing. Suddenly, half the Berlin underworld is after him. One evening, at the worst possible time, Milo also meets Sunny, a red-haired music manager, and falls head over heels for her. She might be the right woman for him for life, except that Sunny is planning to move to the United States soon to take an exciting new job at a record label in Atlanta. Hoping to find out whether he has a chance with her after all, Milo plans a date for the very evening they meet. But their planned romantic dinner takes a completely unexpected turn when his harried friend Renzo barges in and tells Milo that dangerous gangsters are on his tail. Events now unfold at a dizzying pace, and a frantic chase through nocturnal Berlin begins. Three Russian gang members come charging after Renzo; as a cover, they run a children’s play center with bouncy castles. Since Renzo is hiding on the roof across the street, they threaten Milo and demand that he get them the three packages of cocaine or something of equal value. Renzo wants to rob Kempa’s gang, which has hidden three packages of cocaine in a lakeside house. They are pursued, but manage to escape. Milo drops Renzo off at banker Heiko’s game night so that Milo can meet Sunny undisturbed at the Bi Ngo restaurant. Meanwhile, Kempa puts a bounty on the two of them. Milo finds out about it and wants to flee with Sunny. They lie low at Heiko’s game night, but Kempa’s gang tracks them down. Heiko’s friends overpower the gang and throw them off the balcony. Milo, Renzo, and Sunny flee through Berlin’s nightlife and come across the sports car belonging to Sunny’s ex-boyfriend, worth €150,000—the amount they owe the Russian gang. They steal the car and take it to the Russian gang at the children’s play center. Kempa arrives there too and receives the sports car as compensation for his stolen cocaine. Milo and Renzo are given until the end of the month to get the cocaine back, although the 28th has already passed. On the way, Milo finds the van Renzo was supposed to use to transport the cocaine, undamaged and right where Renzo left it: Renzo had forgotten where he parked it. Milo meets Sunny again at her father’s dance club, Maratonga, before she flies to Atlanta. She suggests that he plan the Maratonga’s evening entertainment until she returns from Atlanta. In the final scene, all the characters dance together at the Maratonga that evening.