Marketing Mary

Screenplay

Mary is thrilled. As soon as she arrives in Berlin, the wall falls. The whole city celebrates. Amidst a cheering crowd, under the Brandenburg Gate, she falls in love with Walter, whose dialect she cannot understand, but whose charm she sweeps off her feet. One year later they live as husband and wife with their son Timo in Walter’s picturesque hometown Ützingen.

Fifteen years later it’s all over. Walter has had enough of Mary’s sweatshirt and leggings look and leaves her for another. Mary’s bossy mother curses Walter, his country and Ützingen, this backward, chauvinistic village and can hardly wait to have her daughter and grandson with her forever.

Timo is already looking forward to non-stop television and unlimited junk food. But since a return to America would be an admission of her failure, Mary now stubbornly claims that Ützingen is the place where she and Timo are at home. Thereupon Timo asks snappishly in perfect German why she hasn’t learned the language of her so-called home yet.

When Mary loses her job a few days later and then gets involved in a car accident, she seriously questions her decision. Happiness in disguise leads her to Daniel, who is so taken with Mary’s charm that he immediately offers her a job as a test marketer for his study project. Mary, on the other hand, succumbs to his gallant charm and experiences the best nights of her life.

Decided to prove her mother wrong, Mary accepts the challenge of becoming an entrepreneur. Her first attempts at telemarketing fail miserably. She already sees herself as a welfare recipient when she unexpectedly gets a second chance.

Marias luck is changing and her business will soon be so successful that she needs additional help. Her daring decision to make her ‘best friend’, Leonhard, her partner, turns out to be a stroke of genius. But just when Mary thinks that she has her life under control, she finds out that Daniel didn’t tell the truth about herself…..

MARKETING MARY brings the “American Spirit” to a German city that defies the initial scepticism towards all strangers and makes the locals face up to their prejudices with time.

MARKETING MARY is about people who take their lives into their own hands, even if the resistance seems insurmountable. It is also about the painful experience of freeing oneself from principles that are harmful and from the meaning of true friendships.