DOI: 10.20375/0000-0011-4894-5
title: Die Goldfische

description: Abstract:
“Die Goldfische” recounts an open-roadish story of a centre for disabled people, where a group of friends tries to smuggle cash from Zürich, Switzerland, to Germany. The plot revolves around recently paralyzed Oliver, who tries to save the money from being taken by the German tax bureau. The young banker initially appears reluctant to accept his new circumstances and his disabled peers, but in a roundabout way, he integrates himself into the centre during the trip.
Details: 
Oliver is a successful, ruthless banker who leads a fast-paced life. While stuck in slow-moving traffic on his way to work one morning, he breaks free from the queue by driving in the opposite lane. He is blind-sided by a car that appears out of nowhere behind a camper van, and to avoid a fatal accident, he swerves, but the damage is done, and his car rolls over three times. He wakes up in the hospital to find out he has lost mobility in his legs. After spending three months in a rehabilitation clinic, he has yet to come to terms with his condition and new reality. He does not try to connect with other patients in the clinic and is unwilling to accept that healing will be a slow process. The people around him, his mother, the facility manager, and his boss are concerned that he keeps worrying about work instead of trying to adapt to his new condition as he does not want to jeopardise his professional standing and his clients’ money. One day, at lunch, he meets Laura, a social assistant working with a group of patients with disabilities. They start on the wrong foot as he nearly insults her job and is rejected when he asks her out. As Oliver’s room has spotty internet, he moves to the common room, disrupting Laura’s group therapy session with her patients, whom she calls “the Goldfish.” There are four patients who attend the meeting: two with autism, Michi and Reiner, also called Rainman, Franzi, a girl with Down syndrome, and Magda, a visually impaired woman.
The film’s turning point is a phone call Olive receives from a bank in Switzerland, where he holds undeclared money in a safe deposit box. The German tax authorities found out about it and had started investigating him. Oliver decides to go there and withdraw the money himself. He plans to undertake a trip to avoid being accused of tax evasion and disguises his true intentions under the pretext of visiting a camel farm with members of the Goldfish group. He pays for the trip, and while the others go on a ride with Laura, he bribes the other nurse accompanying them, Eddy, to drive him to the bank. After being blackmailed by Eddy for more money, he tapes the cash to his legs and goes back to the farm.
At the farm, a camel starts chewing his pants. Laura finds out about the money and forces him to drive to Zurich and deposit the money back in the locker. Things begin to fall apart when he wants Eddy to return the bribe. Eddy is on the run, and Laura chases them. Upon losing his trail, Oliver goes back to the van where his comrades are waiting. Magda suggests that in exchange for a bribe, she could teach Rainman to drive, and they could run away without Laura. Oliver agrees and after a rough start, Rainman drives them away. They receive a call from Laura, who is worried and infuriated, but they inform her that they are driving away and she should hail a taxi. Everyone now wants a slice of the proverbial pie in the form of a bribe. Franzi wants expensive clothes instead of money. They all head to a boutique in Zurich, where they have to convince a sceptical shop assistant that they can indeed pay for the clothes and buy an expensive outfit for her. Oliver realises that the money bundles tied to his leg are bruising his legs, and he decides to transfer them on Michi. On their way back to the car, they see Eddy buying an expensive watch in a shop, and Oliver chases him. All of them manage to knock him down, tie him to the car seat while he’s unconscious, and drive away.
They are about to cross the border when Rainman has an episode while driving. Instead of meeting with an accident, they drive onto a field running next to the road. Oliver convinces Magda to get behind the wheel by being her eyes on the road and guiding her. They nearly destroy the van but make it to the border. They are stopped by the police, who flags them down after witnessing Magda’s haphazard driving. They manage to stall the police long enough until Laura rescues them by talking to the police. Laura was abandoned by her taxi driver once he realised she had no money to pay him. They manage to cross the border without any further complication but realise that they lost Michi in the field when they drove off the road. They drive back for him and locate him at an amusement park just as he was getting on a ride that will shoot him off in the sky. The rides take off and when he is all the way at the top, the money bundles come off him in the form of 500-euros-bills that leads to a wild scramble at the park. Oliver witnesses this, accepts the futility of his attempts, and wants just to get home.
Once they get back to the rehabilitation clinic, Laura, disappointed and angry, disappears. For Oliver and the other patients, things go back to normal. His money was never traced, and they renewed his contract at the company as his colleague faces tax evasion accusations. However, he does not feel the same drive to earn as he did before. The Goldfish members convince him to confess to the facility manager so that Laura could get her job back. They learn that the facility manager already knew, and Laura was not fired but had resigned because she felt she had failed as a social assistant. The manager, worried by the financial state of the facility, suggests that Oliver could help his banker friends legalise their money by donating it to the facility, and Oliver accepts. When they are about to take off on their second trip, Oliver feels the absence of Laura and rushes to the fast-food restaurant where she works to convince her to come back. She is reluctant but accepts.