East Germans abduct a U.S. coed (Linda Blair) and throw her in a women's prison run by a brutal inmate (Sylvia Kristel).

Marie Theres is a perfectly assimilated German in Vienna. She is a good wife to her husband Alexander, an understanding mother to her teenage daughter and a successful and respected doctor, who cares deeply about her patients. One day her perfect life falls apart: her husband leaves, her daughter rebels, she makes mistakes at the hospital and her friends abandon her. Then she meets Fa, a self-confident Iranian woman. The two fall in love with each other and Marie Theres starts to learn to put her own needs and wants first.

Vienna, 1937, on the eve of the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany. The young and inexperienced Franz Huchel begins to learn about both the joys and hardships of life by working as an apprentice to the mutilated war veteran Otto Trsnjek in a small tobacco shop, where he meets the famous psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, who will become a valuable friend in times of chaos and uncertainty.