Germany 2005. The post-war "Wirtschaftswunder" dream has faded away like a cloud of steam. A slap-in-the-face reality check. Germans have woken up to find unemployment at a post-war high. Pensions, health services and social security are in the firing line. National pride and confidence are at an all time low. It’s every-man-for-himself, time to save your skin. So what do you do? Have a sauna. No Sweat is a lively black comedy about life in Germany ...morein 2005. It’s a time rampant with depression and anxiety, but also a time for obsessive optimism and radical action. In this story we meet characters from very different backgrounds who have one important thing in common – they each go to a Sauna every Thursday. For most of them it’s their last luxury, a safe haven in the storm. Brother and sister JOST and NADINE’s Sauna “Schwitzkasten” is a melting pot for people from all different classes and lines of work. Naked, they are all equal. Toni has been a father for eight years, divorced for two years and unemployed for three years. His self-esteem is rock bottom and has become a problem below the belt - Toni’s not only having problems keeping his chin up. Now he has to decide between taking the work the job-cent re forces on him, and seeing his son. Toni’s ex-wife, Karin, lost her job as a Russian teacher right after the wall fell, but she’s become a hard-nosed survivor. She can sell any useless rubbish to anybody and is proud of it. She’s already lost her friends as a result and now her kids have had enough too. Dani is an air hostess, a self-made-woman. But her high-flying career suddenly goes into an uncontrolled spin when the airline lays her off. Dani has to pick up the pieces and think smaller. But she discovers unemployment can come up with some interesting surprises. Monika is a twenty-something with a degrees in ethnology and in how-to-get-as-much-social-security-money-as-possible. She’s been deciding what to do with her life for years, now. Things come to a head when she has to choose between marriage and helping women in Rwanda. Norbert is the philosopher of the group – a wealthy professor and speechwriter for his wife - a liberal member of parliament. In the sauna, Norbert meets Toni, Dani, Monika and Karin and preaches his liberal doctrine “Unemployment is an opportunity”. The more he observes the others’ fates however, the more he questions his own ideology. And then there’s Nadine and Jost, the owners of the sauna. Their business is cracking under the pressure of the recession, but Jost knows every trick in the book to protect his little sister from the harsh reality. Jost’s dream of a lakeside wellness-hotel are finally dwindling. Until he convinces Norbert to invest. ...hide