Schutzlos (2009)

María, from Honduras, lives illegally in a German city. When she tries to bring her son Pablo and her daughter Isabel to Germany, her German boyfriend, Jens, a teacher, breaks up with her. She earns some money through cleaning jobs and work in a commercial kitchen so she can rent and renovate a run-down apartment. She also illegally borrows 2,000 euros at an interest charge of 1,000 euros to pay for her children’s flight. However, customs sends the children back because they entered the country without an accompanying adult, and María cannot collect them without valid papers. Her second attempt to bring the children to Germany succeeds. Isabel does not feel at home in Germany. Both children live under the constant threat of being discovered by the police and deported. Through her ex-boyfriend Jens, María gets in touch with a school principal who lets her enroll the children without papers. María’s friend Sami, from Morocco, who is in a relationship with a fruit seller she knows and is pregnant by him, is caught by the police and deported. At school, it becomes known that Pablo and Isabel are in Germany illegally. When the police take away an African family from the neighborhood—the boy is friends with Pablo—María takes her children to the apartment of Peter, an insurance mathematician for whom she has a cleaning job. He becomes friends with the children and offers María a marriage of convenience: whether they want to live together is something they can decide later. To do this, María must return to Honduras, obtain the necessary papers, and re-enter Germany legally. At the airport, she says goodbye to her children and Peter.