Ossi's Eleven (2008)

Oswald Schneider, known as Ossi, has just been released from prison when he and his friend Karl Brenner are already hatching a new heist. Their first idea falls through because Ossi is out of touch with current affairs: the facility he wants to rob has not existed for some time. They need another plan, and find one: Ossi wants to rob an iron foundry where old Deutsche Mark coins are melted down to make trophies. According to Ossi’s calculations, they could make off with around 300,000 marks, which they could then exchange. Before long, the team also includes brothers Axel and Bruno, successful rowers in East Germany in their day. They were once caught doping for years and now earn their living as unsuccessful bratwurst sellers. Bruno has just survived a suicide attempt, during which Lea Bruhn saved him. She works with Conny Weidenhagen as a security guard, transporting money among other things. Her boss tells her she will be laid off in a few weeks. To Karl’s dismay, Ossi keeps gathering more and more people around him who seem useful or whom he simply feels sorry for. Konrad Hauff is hired to spy on the site, having once been an active Stasi informer. Tommy Beck and his grandfather, Friedrich Preiss, sneak onto the team because Friedrich used to work at the foundry. He later became a librarian, but was recently fired after being replaced by a scanning machine. Tommy, meanwhile, is lovesick: he is in love with his boss’s daughter, Collien, and had sex with her in the guest bathroom, but she slept with him only out of pity. Boris joins the team by chance, and no one really knows who he is or how he got involved. So the group can transport the money away without attracting attention, they plan to steal an armored cash van. In the van they have chosen, Conny and Lea are themselves trying to get at the money being transported, since their boss owes them several months’ wages. They promptly join the team. Ossi’s former colleague Georg Richter becomes the eleventh member. Ossi had once stolen a truckload of televisions from Georg and gone to prison for it. Georg longs to return to Bavaria, because the East German apartment-block neighborhood is making him ill. Ossi gives him a train ticket to the south, but Georg admits that no one is waiting for him in Bavaria. So Ossi brings him onto the team. The team, however, is not as harmonious as expected. Konrad’s past enrages Axel, and Ossi has to mediate. One day, Ossi discovers that his wife, Nina, is having an affair with Karl, but says nothing. Eventually, the plan takes vague shape, and everyone perfects the role assigned to them. They build small gadgets, go over the procedures, and one night the break-in finally begins. A string of mishaps ensues: Bruno has brought a ski cap instead of a ski mask and is now walking around the building with a yellow pom-pom on his head. They manage to pass several dozen little sacks through the factory with practiced precision and load them into the waiting cash van, but soon the burglars realize that everything they are doing is being filmed—the foundry installed a surveillance camera just a few days earlier. Everyone hastily retreats, only to discover outside that Karl has driven off with the money. He wants to start a new life with Nina, but parks the cash van so awkwardly that he cannot open either of its side doors. The police arrest Karl. His phone contains photos of his lovers, including the wife of the police officer questioning him. The officer smugly shows him one of the stolen money sacks: all the coins at the factory had passed through a de-coining machine before delivery, and had therefore been punched through and rendered invalid. Stealing scrap metal is not a serious offense, but Karl ends up in prison for stealing a cash van. The failed heist nevertheless brings some good to those involved: Axel and Bruno talk things out. Bruno had once agreed to doping without Axel’s knowledge. The guilt weighed on him so heavily that he wanted to kill himself, but Axel has known about it for a long time from reading Bruno’s Stasi file. Bruno and his rescuer, Lea, become a couple. Tommy gets his grandfather’s job back by spending weeks removing the books’ barcodes and stealing them without the scanner noticing. The resulting damage far exceeds the cost of employing a librarian. Ossi and Georg eventually become friends. Georg tells Ossi that in Bavaria, bricks are being made out of the now-worthless D-Mark bills, and Ossi ends by asking whether Georg still has the ticket to Bavaria.