Welcome to the Hartmann’s House

When the retired headmistress Angelika Hartmann decides to take in a refugee to her affluent suburban home, the end of civilisation seems nigh. The neighbours are worried about the noise, while Angelika’s husband and their adult children find it inappropriate that a political issue impinges on their private lives. Yet we quickly discover that the life of the Hartmann family is far from perfect and their meeting with the stranger shows their own inconsistencies and hypocrisies. It’s not always easy to tell right from wrong here and the characters meander their way through a series of chaotic entanglements before their affairs finally get straightened out.

With 4 million viewers, Willkommen bei den Hartmanns was the most successful German film of 2017, not least because Simon Verhoeven takes views on the refugee crisis from both the left and right seriously and pits them against one another in a highly comic way.