Trama

A practical joking father tries to reconnect with his hard working daughter by creating an outrageous alter ego and posing as her CEO's life coach.

Winfried doesn't see much of his working daughter Ines. He pays her a surprise visit in Bucharest, where she's busy as a corporate strategist. The geographical change doesn't help them to see more eye to eye. Practical joker Winfried annoys his daughter with corny pranks and jabs at her routine lifestyle of meetings and paperwork. Father and daughter reach an impasse, and Winfried agrees to go home to Germany. Enter Toni Erdmann: Winfried's flashy alter ego. Disguised in a tacky suit, weird wig and fake teeth, Toni barges into Ines' work circle, claiming to be her CEO's life coach. As Toni, Winfried doesn't hold back, and Ines meets the challenge. The harder they push, the closer they become. In all the madness, Ines begins to see that her eccentric father deserves a place in her life.—Official site

Whiling away the hours in Aachen, the divorced and practical joke-prone piano teacher, Winfried, decides to reconnect with Ines: his estranged only daughter, and now a determined business consultant in Bucharest. Of course, surprise visits rarely are welcome--and as the audacious parent adopts a new persona, the flamboyantly outspoken and deliciously extravagant, Toni Erdmann--he takes everyone by storm, infiltrating Ines' well-organised life and her close professional circle. Without a doubt, after years of alienation, Winfried--as his alter-ego, Toni--attempts to make a difference, in high hopes of bridging the gap between them; however, is his unorthodox attempt at reconciliation too little, too late?—Nick Riganas

TONI ERDMANN (Peter Simonischek) is Winfried, 65, a music teacher with a strong penchant for jokes, who lives with his old dog. His daughter Ines (Sandra Hüller) is a career woman who travels around the world in order to optimize companies. Father and daughter could therefore not be more different. He, the soulful, socially romantic '68. She, the rational management consultant who tries to raise her profile at a major outsourcing project in Romania to compete in a mans world.

Winfried does not see much of his daughter at home, he decides after the death of his dog to visit her spontaneously. But the visit does not lead to a rapprochement. Winfried annoys his daughter with mild jokes and subliminal criticism of their performance-oriented life between meetings, hotel bars and countless emails. Father and daughter at an impasse and it comes to a confrontation between the two.

But instead, as announced to leave Bucharest, he surprised Ines with a radical transformation in Toni Erdmann, his dazzling alter ego. With crooked teeth, bad suit and wig Toni is wilder and bolder than Winfried and does not mince his words. Toni mixes in Ines professional life, to be with the assertion that the coach of her boss and start a rampage of jokes. Surprisingly leaves Ines on his offer, and father and daughter making a startling discovery: The harder they clashed, the closer they come.