Rotkäppchen (2005)

Leonie has to go on a trip to visit her grandmother with her parents and her little brother, Simon. Simon wants Leonie to read him the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood, but she refuses. A short while later, Simon gets hungry, and the family goes out to eat together. While looking for the restroom, Leonie suddenly hears quiet voices and eerie noises and becomes frightened. When Simon asks her again during the drive to read him the story of Little Red Riding Hood, she reads it aloud with a changed plot. Suddenly, the car breaks down on a remote country road in the forest, and their father has to walk back to the inn. Leonie, Simon, and their mother wait for him and unsuccessfully try to start a fire. When Leonie notices something red in the forest, she follows the mysterious figure into a cave and enters a fairy-tale world, where she seems to have swapped places with Little Red Riding Hood. She meets a boy named Konrad, who is friends with Little Red Riding Hood and initially finds her strange because she uses unfamiliar words like “hello” and “cool.” Leonie, in her role as Little Red Riding Hood, thinks the whole thing is a joke, but agrees to meet Konrad anyway. Then she goes to her “new” mother, Elsa, who looks exactly like her own mother. Leonie naturally doesn’t know her way around the house, and her mother is puzzled by her supposed daughter’s strange behavior. The hunter Alfons, Elsa’s clumsy suitor, comes to visit and talks with Little Red Riding Hood. When Leonie meets up with Konrad, he shows her his new “foot-pusher” (a primitive bicycle). They meet again at night, and Leonie tells Konrad that she isn’t really Little Red Riding Hood. Together they look for the mountain, hoping Leonie can use it to return to her world. But the forest at night frightens them, and they turn back. To be on the safe side, Leonie tells Konrad what is supposed to happen to her the next day according to the original fairy tale. Sure enough, the next morning her mother sends her to her grandmother’s house. First, she encounters two robbers who want to rob her, but they are unexpectedly driven off by the seemingly friendly wolf. Leonie is suspicious, but in the end the wolf still manages to trick her. He runs ahead to her grandmother’s house and gobbles her up, bones and all. When Leonie goes looking for her grandmother, she is eaten too. In the meantime, Konrad has called Alfons for help, and Alfons accompanies him on the foot-pusher to the grandmother’s house. They find the wolf asleep, and Alfons cuts open its belly, freeing Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother. Together, they fill the wolf’s belly with stones, which eventually kill him. Leonie has now endured the fate of the real Little Red Riding Hood and is allowed to return to her own world through the mountain. At the same time, the real Little Red Riding Hood returns to the fairy-tale world. Leonie happily greets her mother and Simon and learns that no one even noticed she was gone, since no time has passed. Leonie now manages to start the fire because she learned how to do it in the fairy-tale world. A short while later, her father returns with a farmer, who takes the family in his tractor to the next village, where there is a car mechanic. On the way, Leonie tells Simon the real story of Little Red Riding Hood.