Catherine Janke

A department store security guard is secretly in love with a clerk in the store's bookshop. When he witnesses a seeming rival being attacked in the train, he gets off instead of helping him. Not being able to deal with his bad conscience, his formerly controlled life breaks down.

Like every year, André, manager of a company named ALTER NATIVE that furnishes sanitary article, invites his seven employees to a quietly festive Christmas weekend. Yet, unlike the years before, André has bad news. He is terminally ill and wants to hand over his company to one of them. He will announce his successor in the course of the weekend. His collaborators immediately turn into competitors. When his own son, Philippe, whom nobody knew about, makes a sudden appearance, cards are redistributed, but suspicion quickly arises that André plays a deceptive game. While his employees, in a crazy race behind the back of the others, try to make their mark, Philippe tries to understand the obscure game his father is playing. And what role does the hotel owner play in all this? Jingle bells? Jingle bells!

Jewish aesthete Cioma, 21, does not let anyone take away his joy of life, especially not the Nazis. In 1942, he has to find new ways to make his living in Berlin and escape deportation. In the process he discovers his talent for forgery: not only with passports, but also his own identity.