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The documentary traces the lives of courageous rural women as they grow older: their wishes, their dreams, and their hopes of the big win at Bingo.
Gisela, Christel, Elke, Helga and Emmi are rooted in the northern German land of Schleswig-Holstein; they come from humble backgrounds and speak the Low German dialect.
After basic schooling they had to go into service on farms, married very young, and bore their children. Today they live alone and have taken their lives into their own hands. They were born between 1933 and 1945; they are five of the ‘forgotten generation’. In the years after the Second World War they started from nothing and threw themselves, more vehemently than ever before or since, into the search for their own luck.
The Bingo game, as well as offering the chance of winning, is a welcome respite from these women’s everyday routine and a metaphor of their pursuit of happiness.