Wer aufgibt ist tot (2016)

Paul Lohmann, once a successful sales representative for mirrors, leads a selfish but also dishonest life. He drinks, cheats on his wife Edith with a younger woman, is despised by his daughter Sonja, and is now falling behind professionally under his new boss. He has repressed the accidental death of his second daughter, Paula, and has never visited her grave. His wife's divorce letter lies unopened on his desk. Even to himself, Lohmann can barely maintain the facade of a successful employee and ideal family man. While driving to visit a customer, Lohmann picks up a hitchhiker named Angie. Drunk and in a hurry, he crashes in a tunnel. Later, Lohmann is declared brain-dead in hospital, but as a ghost he can continue to watch events unfold, invisible to everyone except Angie, who turns out to be an angel meant to guide him through the “in-between world between life and death.” Angie allows Lohmann, who is not yet ready to die, to relive the final hours before the crash, even several times, with each replay beginning earlier than the last. In the end, however, she only agrees after he wagers against her using a tampered coin. After his attempts to prevent the crash fail again and again, and eventually someone else has to crash in his place because he saves a boy's life at a swimming lake, Lohmann realizes that he cannot escape his fate. He understands that he must use the time he has been given to face his mistakes and accept the inevitable, so that his family will remember him fondly. Once he manages this, he even deliberately causes the crash at the end so that his young colleague will not fall victim to it instead. The exit of the tunnel where the accident occurred then shines with a bright light, and Lohmann walks into it resolutely. The deceased Paula runs toward him. In a video message recorded by Sonja, Lohmann has left instructions that his body should be used for organ donation. As the doctors prepare to transplant his heart, his grieving wife and daughter are shown. The film ends on a cliffhanger: just before the credits, a doctor finds “some life” in Lohmann's eye when his pupil reacts to light.