A Birthday to Remember (2003)

• 64%
• 2003
• Drama
• Hans Steinbichler
• Johanna Wokalek
• Barbara Sukowa
• Josef Bierbichler

Young student Lene is standing at the train station; she must decide whether to take the train back to Berlin where she lives or the one to the Bavarian countryside where her family resides--the place she left in anger many years ago. 'Hierankl' is the name of a Bavarian "Bergbauernhof", i.e., a solitary farm in the mountains with nothing else around but Alps, cows, and nature. Lene returns home to her beloved father Lukas, her rejecting mother Rosemarie, her brother Paul, and a dark, sinister farmhand. She walks through the places of her childhood and feels better. Things get better yet when Götz, a long-missed friend of her father's, arrives to celebrate Lukas' 60th birthday. Despite their significant age difference, Lene and Götz are attracted to each other, and they have a good time. But the day of celebration that should have been, turns into family day of reckoning, and more than one well-kept family secret is revealed.