This year’s German entry for Academy Awards is a hilarious mixture of family drama and embarrassment comedy about the complicated relationship between a stiff businesswoman and her reckless, jocular father. Retired piano teacher Winfried has a penchant for pranks which irritate and alienate everyone around him. When he decides to get back in touch with his daughter Ines, he faces a resolute rejection. But Winfried, with dogged determination, infiltrates Ines’s private and professional life with the alter-ego of an eccentric businessman called Toni Erdmann. Ines gets in on the game and the situation is quickly bordering on the absurd. The film won the FIPRESCI Award for Best Film of the Year, making Maren Ade the first female director to receive this prestigious award.