Winter in Frankfurt
Professional Materials
Feature Film | Drama | Germany / Ghana
A Black German mother of five, trapped in addiction and family trauma, fights toward recovery after the death of her closest friend—while her eldest daughter seeks a radically different future in a women’s collective in Ghana.
Winter in Frankfurt is a contemporary drama inspired by the Demeter–Persephone myth. Set between Frankfurt and Ghana, it follows Persephone, a 37-year-old Black German mother of five, as she confronts addiction, grief, and the abuse buried inside her adoptive family, while her eldest daughter Jasmin begins building a life inside a women’s collective in Ghana. The two women move toward different forms of recovery—and toward the possibility that freedom may require leaving patriarchal structures behind rather than surviving within them.
Tone & Themes
Intimate, unsentimental, and ultimately hopeful. Winter in Frankfurt explores addiction, motherhood, sexual abuse, family loyalty, race, grief, and recovery through a feminist lens. At its center is a question that runs through the Give & Take universe: what becomes possible when women stop organizing their lives around patriarchal demands and begin building security with one another?
Mythic Framework
Winter in Frankfurt draws on the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, but translates its central conflict into contemporary family life. Persephone is still the daughter caught between captivity and return, while the story’s maternal figures embody both the failures and the restorative force of Demeter. The myth becomes a framework for addiction, abuse, separation, and recovery—and for the possibility that “spring” comes not through restoring the old family order, but through women creating a different one.
Key Characters
Persephone — 37
A Black German mother of five who has cycled through rehab repeatedly and survived more than she has ever fully confronted. The death of her closest friend Linden forces her to face both her addiction and the violence embedded in the family that raised her.
Jasmin — 21
Persephone’s eldest daughter. Clear-eyed about the damage around her, she leaves Germany for Ghana and begins testing whether a women-centered collective can offer something her family never did: stability, autonomy, and belonging.
Why This Film
Winter in Frankfurt combines an intimate recovery drama with a larger feminist examination of family, inheritance, and withdrawal from patriarchal structures. Its emotional engine is personal—grief, addiction, motherhood, abuse—but its scope widens as Persephone and Jasmin each confront the systems that have shaped their lives.
Current Status
- Completed feature screenplay
- Copyright registered — September 2026
- Submitted to the Berlin Independent Film Festival (BIFF) — September 2026
- Developed as part of the Give & Take Universe
- Available for producer, director, financing, and international co-production consideration