Schule am Meer - Familienbande (2023)

Katharina Hendriks, who runs a vocational school specializing in gastronomy in Flensburg, is worried because there are not enough applications for the new academic year. To promote the school, she plans an “open day” featuring a cooking demonstration. Her guest lecturer and celebrity chef Erik Olsen offers to help, and, without asking Katharina, invites her sister Antje Beringer to be the event’s patron. Antje is also a celebrity chef. The sisters fell out 15 years ago after Katharina’s young daughter died, and now the open day forces them to speak to each other again. But Katharina isn’t the only one dealing with a family conflict. One of her students, Sven Tiedgen, suffers from an anxiety disorder. His father owns a small butcher shop and expects Sven to become a butcher too and eventually take over the business. But Sven has a strong aversion to killing animals because he loves them. To cope as best he can with this contradiction, he takes medication for his anxiety, but it is gradually causing side effects and problems with his circulation. Still, he wants to train as a butcher for his father’s sake, although Katharina advises him against it. He doesn’t want to disappoint anyone, and he has already promised Erik Olsen that he will butcher a cow in front of an audience during the school’s upcoming cooking demonstration. In the face of this conflict, Sven starts drinking alcohol in addition to taking his medication, unaware that this could be life-threatening. When he collapses unconscious, Katharina fortunately finds him in time and calls an ambulance. She also informs Sven’s father, who had no idea about his son’s problems. Understandingly, he tells Sven that only Sven matters to him and that everything else is secondary. Meanwhile, the cooking demonstration has begun at the school. The teaching kitchen is full of visitors and students, but the part Sven was supposed to take on is canceled. That also means there is no meat for the main courses—a disaster, really. But Erik Olsen saves the event by announcing, “Today we’re cooking vegetarian.” The students take their places and, under Erik and Antje’s guidance, show what they have learned so far. In the end, they manage to get enough applications for the new academic year, and Katharina is relieved. She thanks her sister, because without her things surely wouldn’t have gone so well. She is also willing to extend Erik’s appointment as a guest lecturer after he says he would like to stay in Flensburg longer.