Hermine Huntgeburth's coming-of-age drama focuses on a girl growing up in a typical German working-class family during the 1950s. Although her parents believe that a woman doesn't need a good education, Hildegard, living in a plain and hypocritical world, gets the opportunity to attend a good high school and fights to decide on her own life.

Teufelsbraten

The film starts with the main character Laura, a young woman with advanced cancer, entering quite upset the home of her parents and claiming to have stopped chemo therapy and having left her husband. The worried parents call the other three adult daughters into the house and they arrive one by one. For the first time in 6 years the entire family is united again. The characters are drawn as tensions rise from old conflicts and as the situation sinks in that Laura might be terminally ill. The movie eventually shifts from a lively sometimes comical beginning into the serious theme of dying and does handle this quite tactfully and moving. While the film touches on many areas surrounding death (including religion, graveyard, care, eutanasia) the main focus is on the transformation of the characters that are thrown out of their busy lifes into this situation, eventually accepting it and dealing with it.