In director Thomas Arslan’s own words, “A family for me is a complex emotional field with strong attraction and repelling forces. The interesting thing about families is that you have a framework binding a group of people together. That gave me the possibility to establish various connections and to play out various facets of love lives and family life. I used observation from my personal life to form the individual characters.” The family at the center of Vacation comprises Anna, her husband Robert, and their son Max. A summer holiday in the woods outside of Berlin begins innocuously, but soon becomes a fight to simply maintain family cohesion. Joining them are Laura, Anna’s daughter from a previous marriage, her boyfriend Paul, their kids, and Laura’s sister Sophie. Soon, secrets, lingering resentment, and petty insecurities conspire to destabilize the family in Arslan’s painterly portrait of family bonds.