Two middle aged German brothers - one New Age and recently divorced, the other uptight and sceptical - travel to a Zen monastery in Japan in search of enlightenment, or perhaps just in search of themselves.
Erleuchtung garantiert is a 1999 German film directed by Doris Dörrie about two brothers, Uwe and Gustav, who travel to Japan in order to find themselves. The two plan to retreat for a while at the Sōji-ji Monastery in Monzen, Ishikawa in the Noto Peninsula, well away from Tokyo. On their way there, in a rather literal Buddhist moment, the brothers lose all of their belongings. When they finally make it to the monastery, they find that even there, enlightenment can be elusive.