After the death of her husband, Sarah gets caught up in the wheels of the "most sinful mile in the world," Hamburg's Kiez. In this ruthless machinery that produces nothing but violence, money and lust, the sensitive Sarah tries to adapt emotionlessly. It is a long and hard process of acclimation, but eventually the business of love becomes a profession for Sarah. The power of money holds her captive. And the more she succeeds in increasing her value in the milieu, the more she distances herself from her past bourgeois world - along with her concepts of love, decency and morality. An affair almost becomes her undoing. Sarah flees deeper into the labyrinth - onto the path of venal masochism. She becomes a whip-wielding dominatrix in the notorious Herbertstraße. Now the others are the victims, but Sarah almost loses her mind...

Henriette Johanne Marie Müller, known as Zitronenjette, was a Hamburg original. At the end of the 19th century, she traveled through the streets and bars of Hamburg's harbour and Neustadt districts with a basket full of lemons to make a living selling the fruit. Lemon, lemon, that's how she advertised her wares and was known not only for her unusual appearance, but also for her drinking strength.

Ironies abound in this extremely sad melodrama about Elif, a Turkish immigrant in Germany who has been sent to prison for murdering her abusive husband. At the time of her imprisonment, she has never ventured outside the Turkish community, and even there has had no friends because of the demands her husband placed on her. She speaks no German. Now, in a place which most people find to be hell on earth, she gains a never-before known taste of freedom among these strangers, who don't even speak her own language. Unfortunately, as a "guest worker," she is horrified to discover that she is soon to be transferred to the horrific prisons of Turkey and will stand trial there for her crime, which will be much less understandingly dealt with in her home country than it would have been in Germany. The false paradise she must say goodbye to is her German prison.