Wohin der Weg mich führt (2012)

Sarah Stein is a successful lawyer. She is determined to become a partner at a prestigious Frankfurt law firm, and has devoted her entire life to her career. The ambitious woman is therefore given what seems like a simple assignment. The foster father of Peter Jahn, a winegrower, recently died. Since there is no will, his biological son Siggi is claiming the winery. Every letter from the lawyers to Peter has gone unanswered, so Sarah is hired to hand the family estate over to the sole heir. But when she goes to tell Peter that he must leave, he explains that his foster father intended to leave him the estate and had even visited him last summer specifically to change his will accordingly. Although there is a witness to this, the jealous Siggi simply made the will disappear. Siggi is hardly interested in the vineyards; instead, he wants to have the estate demolished and build a luxury wellness hotel on the property. Peter knew nothing about the lawyers’ letters because one of his foster sons had taken them out of the mail. As a former lawyer, however, he is sure no judge would throw him and his three foster sons out onto the street. Sarah has little interest in Peter’s case and just wants to finish the assignment. Unfortunately, her sports car is broken and in the repair shop, so she rents a room at a local guesthouse. She uses this unexpected stay to try to persuade Peter to give in voluntarily. When that fails, she goes further and tries to discredit Peter with the youth welfare office. A prank Peter’s foster sons play on her comes in handy: Sarah seizes the opportunity to have the winegrower’s custody taken away. Then nothing would stand in the way of the eviction suit. The lawyer seems to have achieved her goal, but she gradually develops misgivings because she had not considered what this would do to the children, who clearly love their foster father and their home. After getting to know Peter’s youngest foster son, Theo, better, she is reminded of her own childhood. He also confides that he was the one who made the lawyers’ letters disappear, because his past has taught him that whenever such letters arrived, he would have to leave his foster family. And he does not want to leave this place. But Sarah’s report has already set the youth welfare office’s wheels in motion, and Theo is to be the first sent to a new foster family. On impulse, the lawyer withdraws her report and admits that perhaps the children were not the ones who played a prank after all—she may have been the one who caused the harm. She has also suddenly developed feelings for this quirky lawyer, and the two discover that they actually have a lot in common: Sarah herself grew up on a winery and knows how to operate the harvesting machine. With her help, the grape harvest is brought in just in time, before a storm. She realizes there is more to life than a career, and tries to help Peter get justice. Since the legal moves she has set in motion can no longer be undone, she strongly advises him to talk to Siggi. He does, and in this conversation, arranged by Sarah, he asks Siggi to withdraw his claim for the boys’ sake. Siggi had secretly been waiting a long time for such an “intimate” conversation between them, because he had always envied Peter but had never told him so. From Siggi’s point of view, Peter had always been the “great one,” and he could never measure up to him. Only now does he learn from Peter that he had just imagined it, and that their father had indeed been proud of him. The brothers reconcile, and “all is well,” as Siggi withdraws his claim to the winery. Peter thanks Sarah, and she stays with him and the children.