Josef und Maria - Römerpark Ensemble

At the close of a successful Christmas season, the management of a large department store hands its employees "as a token of appreciation" a small bottle of "quality brandy". Excluded are foreign and non-permanent staff - among them the cleaner Maria, whose shift only begins once the other employees have left the building, and the night watchman Josef. Both are already retired, but they take on temporary work to supplement their pensions in the run-up to Christmas.

Just before Christmas Eve, the two find themselves alone in the empty store and fall into conversation - sharing the chapters of their lives, their wishes and dreams, hopes fulfilled and dashed, political and personal worries. What emerges is a portrait of two lonely people from the underside of an affluent society, who eventually try to give each other a little of that "appreciation" - in a spontaneous, unofficial "celebration of love" - that the consumer world around them withholds.

"The image society holds of old people is least of all shaped by old people themselves. Advertising discovers them as a 'specific consumer group', television turns them into cheerful 'seniors'... I don't want to tell you a story 'about' old people - I want to pass on the stories, memories and accounts I have heard from old people". (Author Peter Turrini)