The Lehmanns are an average German family – three children, a small house, a car – and live in the small town of Bad Nauheim in Hesse, near Frankfurt. What looks like a model family from the outside shows severe cracks on the inside, just like the broken house roof and the water damage in the bedroom. The family print shop is in deep crisis, the loan on the house has long since reached its limit, and father Jochen (Bastian Pastewka) is threatening to collapse under the financial pressure. Mother Julia (Susanne Wolff) is having fun with a lover, son Vincent (Moritz Jahn) is a nerd, teenage daughter Laura (Janina Fautz) only has her “crush” on her mind, and nestling Nadine (Katharina Kron) is more of a little devil than the cute sunshine her parents think she is.
But Jochen gets almost nothing of this, desperate to keep up appearances and get a new loan from the bank. But no matter how much he humiliates himself, the bankers turn off the tap, and the house and the company slide inexorably toward the abyss. In an act of blind desperation, Jochen turns on his printing presses one night and starts printing fake fifties: If everyone wants money from him, then he’ll just do it himself. He quickly comes to his senses, but by then it’s already too late: a blossom makes its way into the economic cycle. When nothing happens, Jochen continues and begins to bring the counterfeit money to the people in Frankfurt. In doing so, he attracts the attention of the Frankfurt underworld, and suddenly finds himself deeper and deeper in a whirlpool of criminal machinations from which he can’t get out at all.
The five-part ZDF mini-series “Morgen hör’ ich auf” stars Susanne Wolff, Uwe Preuss, Georg Friedrich and Margarita Broich alongside Bastian Pastewka. Other roles are played by Torben Liebrecht, Alexander Scheer, Stephan Grossmann, André Jung, Wolfgang Rüter and Cornelius Obonya. The film is directed by Martin Eigler, who also wrote the scripts together with authors Sönke Lars Neuwöhner and Sven S. Poser.
“Morgen hör’ ich auf” is a production of Network Movie Cologne, producers are Wolfgang Cimera and Bettina Wente, producer Nina Güde. Elke Müller is the editor at ZDF.