Willkommen auf dem Land! (2013)

The Berlin couple Rita and Leo view a house in a village in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Rita had always dreamed of a life in the country. Leo, on the other hand, is not very enthusiastic about her idea. He only agrees to it when his employers plan to retire him from his job as a motivational trainer, hoping that the move will let him take over a branch of his management consultancy. But a younger colleague gets the position instead. Leo then tells his friend Peter that an acquaintance is looking for a job. That is how he learns that the local employment office is looking for a motivational trainer for long-term unemployed people who are difficult to place in work. He eventually gets the job, but tells Rita that he is running a branch of his former employer. Meanwhile, Rita tries to befriend the women next door, but is met with rejection as a newcomer from West Germany. Feeling lonely, she invites Leo’s daughter Anna and granddaughter Elisa to visit. The invitation comes at just the right time for Anna. She is due to run an art exhibition in Zurich and wants to leave Elisa with Rita and Leo for a while. But 13-year-old, overweight Elisa proves difficult. She spends most of her time playing video games and would rather eat pizza than Rita’s home-cooked meals. At the welcome evening, to which Rita has invited all the neighbors, only two of them show up: an older, somewhat simple-minded woman and an eccentric, rather odd one. After they leave, Rita and Leo have an argument. Rita complains that she has always moved for him and his career, repeatedly losing her friends in the process, and never having a child of her own. The next day, the village’s former mayor—the most hostile of the neighbors—angrily brings Elisa back to Rita. The girl has deliberately dirtied the laundry she had hung out to dry. Rita gives Elisa a stern talking-to, whereupon Elisa runs away. Worried, Rita calls Leo, who is still on his way home, and together they set off to look for Elisa. Two neighbors help them, and they eventually find the frightened girl in a barn. After that, Elisa becomes friendlier and, being handy, helps clean the drain and do gardening with Leo’s new ride-on lawn mower. Peter and his wife Brigitte come to visit for Leo’s birthday. Leo has meanwhile complained to the head of the employment office that his unemployed seminar participants have not been given enough funding to renovate the village pub. He just manages to reach the branch of the management consultancy before Rita, Peter, and Brigitte, who are planning to surprise him there. But Peter knows about Leo’s real job and presses him to tell Rita the truth. The seminar participants also show up at Leo’s birthday party with a homemade cake and happily tell him that, thanks to him, they have received enough funding for the village pub. Leo asks them not to tell Rita about his work. But the former mayor also turns up and wants to thank him for the service he has done for the community. That is how Rita finally discovers that Leo has been lying to her all along. Outraged by this breach of trust, she drives off. Leo and Elisa follow her on the lawn mower and find her again on a remote road. In the end, they all drive back together. Anna then returns from Zurich to pick Elisa up. Before leaving, Anna—who once had a drug problem and was thrown out by Leo as a result—makes peace with her father. Leo and Rita then go swimming in a nearby lake. But Leo has no swimming trunks with him, and Rita encourages him to swim naked, saying that they are in the East and naturism is no problem there. He then stands naked in front of his surprisingly prudish neighbors.