Simpel (2017)

Ben and Barnabas, who live in East Frisia, are brothers and have been inseparable for as long as they can remember. Twenty-two-year-old Barnabas, whom everyone simply calls Simpel, has the mental development of a three-year-old because he received too little oxygen at birth. Along with Ben, his best friend is his stuffed rabbit, Monsieur Hasehase, whom he takes everywhere. Simpel can sometimes be an awful nuisance, but Ben cannot imagine life without him. When their mother, Julia, dies unexpectedly, people want to put Simpel in an institution, but both Ben and Barnabas object and run away. They steal the village policeman Gruber’s police van and spend a night outdoors. They set off on an adventurous journey to Hamburg to become sailors. They also have to find their father, David, whom they have not seen for 15 years. By now, however, he lives with his new wife, Clara, and wants nothing to do with his disabled son. Ben and Barnabas’s road trip spirals out of control after a terrible argument with their father on a Hamburg train platform. For the first time, Ben loses his temper with his brother, who then runs off and boards the next train. Together with Aria and Enzo, whom he and Simpel had met on the way to Hamburg, Ben sets out to look for him. In the end, Simpel is found in a furniture store, where he had made himself comfortable in a bed. The police, alerted to his presence, chase the fleeing Simpel onto the store’s roof. In his panic, Simpel accidentally knocks Monsieur Hasehase off the roof with an awkward movement. Completely shocked, Simpel threatens to jump after him, so that he can be reunited in death with his friend and his mother. But Ben, who reaches the roof just in time, manages to stop him. In the final scene, Aria and Enzo operate on the injured Monsieur Hasehase at Haus Sonnengarten, the facility for people with disabilities where Simpel will now live. Ben then says goodbye to Simpel and drives away with the police.