Weihnachten im Schnee (2019)

This time, everything is supposed to be different. Gitta and Henri Johnen, a married couple who run an optician’s shop in Hamburg, plan to celebrate Christmas with their family for the first time far from Hamburg, in a holiday home in snowy Norway. The house and travel arrangements have already been booked, and their three adult children, Annika, Sanne and Bastian, have been informed by email. The short-notice announcement leaves them all stunned, since each had made their own plans for the holidays. In the end, their mother Gitta persuades them all to go. She wants to spend Christmas in the snow and marvel at the Northern Lights. She and Henri intend to reveal their secret only after the family has celebrated together. Conflicts soon arise in the cramped quarters. Bastian, a free spirit, tries to ask his parents for money after his café goes bankrupt, incurring his sisters’ displeasure after a string of failed business ideas. Their parents are worried about their daughter Sanne, who works as a doctor at the university hospital and is still without a steady partner and childless. Annika, who drove there with her husband Christoph and their 15-year-old son Simon because of her fear of flying, feels neglected by her mother and father. After years together, her marriage to Christoph has reached a dead end. She does not want to follow him to a new job in Alaska. Annika’s uncertainty grows when, while out shopping, she runs into local carpenter Morten, the nephew of their landlady, Finja Lund. She had met him by chance during a stop on the drive there. The accountant and the former bank employee hit it off immediately. During a cross-country skiing tour, Christoph receives an offer for the Alaska project and accepts it at once, without considering Annika. She then turns back alone and encounters Morten again. That evening, they meet again at the inn and go to Morten’s workshop. Annika accidentally takes two sleeping pills that night and consequently sleeps through the family’s outing to Lillehammer. When she gets up late, she notices two horses that frighten her wandering around the house. She runs to Morten. They sleep together. That evening, Annika tries to talk to Gitta, but the conversation escalates yet again. Shortly afterward, Gitta collapses in Henri’s arms in the living room. As Gitta is taken to hospital, Henri feels compelled to tell the children that she has incurable pancreatic cancer. The siblings are shocked, but decide to honor their mother’s wishes and spend the Christmas holidays as she wants. When Gitta returns from the hospital, they celebrate Christmas Eve together, but she realizes that everyone knows about her illness. During the night, the Northern Lights Gitta had longed to see appear, and Annika talks things through with her mother. She confesses her affair to Christoph. He is hurt; he, too, realizes that they have grown apart. In the end, he and Simon fly home, while Annika, Sanne and Bastian travel together by car and ferry. The three siblings grow closer again along the way. A year later, the family gathers for Christmas at Annika’s apartment. Gitta has since died. Bastian has taken over her position at the family’s eyeglasses business, which Henri had previously wanted to sell to a retail chain. Sanne has become a mother and lives with her colleague Mark, the child’s father. Christoph has moved to Alaska for the construction project and is spending the holidays there too; Simon will visit him there. When the doorbell rings again after the family has arrived, Annika is surprised to find Morten at the door. Sanne, Bastian and Finja had asked him to come to Hamburg.