Staub auf unseren Herzen (2012)

The young mother Kathi wants to establish herself professionally as an actress in Berlin, but finds it difficult because she is slow-moving and has family problems. She regularly auditions for roles but is repeatedly turned down, partly because of her lack of talent. She is the opposite of her mother, Chris, a life coach who makes fun of what Kathi is trying to do. Chris, however, is also now a single mother, with a teenage son, Gabriel. Her husband left her when she was pregnant. When Kathi’s son Lenni goes missing for a short time, Chris blames her daughter and doubts her ability to care for a child. After that, she takes an increasingly active role in raising the child and in the life of her adult daughter. She sets Kathi up in an apartment nearby and practically takes the boy away from her, leading to a full-blown argument between them. Little Lenni has to witness it, and Kathi leaves her mother’s home with him. Kathi’s father, Wolfgang, suddenly turns up. He would like to win back his ex-wife, Chris, but she refuses. He disappointed her too deeply, and she cannot forgive him. He tries to find his way back into the family through the children, but Kathi wants nothing more to do with him either. Her father brings back too many painful memories of the past. His son Gabriel, on the other hand, does not know him at all, but is open to making up for lost time. After her argument with her mother, Kathi eventually moves with her son away from Chris’s home and into her former, much more modest apartment. When Chris visits her there, Kathi rejects her attempt at reconciliation. She joins Fabian, a puppeteer she met some time ago, and finally goes her own way.