Oskar, das Schlitzohr und Fanny Supergirl (2022)

Fanny, an eight-year-old girl with an autism spectrum disorder that has not been more specifically diagnosed, attends a mainstream elementary school. The fact that she almost always wears a colorful superhero costume, even at school, needs a lot of attention, and does not realize when people are playing tricks on her makes her a target for mockery and nastier pranks. Her parents seem overwhelmed: her father, Christian, is often away because of work commitments, while her mother, Tilda, devotes herself entirely to her daughter, refuses all professional help for fear of stigmatizing her, and as a result has no life of her own. As the film progresses, a conflict also develops with the other parents in the class, who feel that Fanny is holding back their own children’s academic progress. At the beginning of the film, Tilda’s father, Oskar, is released from the prison sentence he served for fraud and has nowhere to go. Virtually everyone close to him has cut ties with him. Tilda, too, would not take him in, so at first he secretly lives in his old caravan, which is on Tilda’s property and which Fanny uses as a retreat. The two meet there and get along surprisingly well: Oskar, who was never too particular about telling the truth and introduces himself to Fanny as “Professor Krypton,” is completely understanding of her quirks and demonstrates this to the shocked neighbors as well. When her parents discover that he is there, they are torn: on the one hand, they reject him themselves; on the other, they see that his company is doing Fanny a great deal of good. The good rapport between Fanny and Oskar leads Tilda to accept an offer to return to her old job as a flight attendant; shortly afterward, Christian leaves on a business trip. Oskar, who knows about autism only from the film Rain Man, is convinced that every autistic person has a savant skill, and during the week he spends alone with Fanny, he tries to discover her “superpower.” She has signed up for the school talent show and needs to find something she can perform there. By chance, he discovers that Fanny has an exceptionally keen sense of smell and hearing, and tries to turn them into a stage act. At that moment, the parents rush in, alerted by the neighbors, and are horrified that Oskar wants to present Fanny as a “sniffer dog”; they fear she will be mocked even more. On the other hand, they are now willing to trust their daughter to do the performance she is looking forward to. With Oskar’s help, it is a success, and she also wins back the sympathy of the other parents. In the final scene, Oskar and Fanny wave to a plane as it takes off, with Tilda working aboard.