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By Ben VERBONG

BETA CINEMA - as SALES All rights, World

Drama - Completed 2009

A perfectly normal, exceptional family story

- Year of production
- 2009
- Genres
- Drama, Comedy
- Countries
- GERMANY
- Languages
- GERMAN
- Duration
- 105 mn
- Director(s)
- Ben VERBONG
- Writer(s)
- Karin HOWARD, Katja KITTENDORF
- Cast
- Anna BOEGER, Christiane PAUL, Julia Maria KOEHLER, Katharina Marie SCHUBERT, Senta BERGER
- Producer(s)
- Anita ELSANI, Ulf ISRAEL
- Synopsis
- So far, it's been a good life for Laura. In her late 20s, she's always been the sunniest of four sisters, and the only one to lead a happy marriage. But now she has cancer. She's given up chemo. And she knows she can either spend her last weeks with her husband Peter and make him sick with care and worry - or spend them with her family and drive them crazy. While her father accepts Laura's decision, her mother quickly rounds up Laura's sisters Susa and Coco to convince her to continue her treatment. But it's Toni, the black sheep of the family, whom Laura wants most badly next to her. And Toni comes, as rebellious and amoral as ever, ready to take her entire family head-on.
  Laura watches as her visibly uncomfortable sisters - together again for the first time in six years - grapple with their emotions. Susa, the eldest, plays the successful career woman who's got everything under control and is singlehandedly planning to save Laura with a new experimental treatment. Coco is the classical wife and mother, who's trying to emulate her own "perfect" mother but is cracking under the pressure. And Toni continues to provoke, frittering away her life in one-night stands and poisoning her heart with recriminations toward her sisters and painful, unsolved issues with her mother. In other words, a houseful of emotions that flare up in sudden flashes of scorn or erupt into boisterous laughter, that open up many long-locked doors and let fresh air into lives that have lost their bearings.
  Laura herself knows that she must return to Paul, her dear, loving husband, and prepare for her final journey. And as she does so, she is able to look upon the faces of men and women who, through her, have found the way to each other again and have learned that fear of death is often nothing but a fear of life.