Seventy-year-old Ruben, a Dutchman and former ship’s cook, strands on the island of Helgoland on a stormy winter day. Helgoland is his last hope. He’s broke. He has no job and no pension. The only thing he still possesses is his old fishing boat. And to build a secure existence as a tourist boat skipper, he’ll have to resort to using it now. But there’s a catch: His daughter Pauline lives on Helgoland and they are estranged because he blames her for her mother’s death. He hasn’t spoken with her for years and thus doesn’t even know about his grandchild. Pelle, the grandson, is keeping a steady eye on his stranded grandfather because his behavior is more than strange. Ruben, for instance, is always talking to his wife, Rosemary, who no one else can see. But Pelle has his own problem too: His mother has cancer. A misunderstanding leads him to believe that the crabs from the ocean (Germans use the same word, namely ‘Krebs’, for both ‘cancer’ and ‘crab’) are responsible for Pauline’s deadly disease. And now he wants to save as many crabs as possible so that they spare his mother. This puts him in grave danger…
