When the farm boy Felix is born with a caul, the rumor spreads in no time that this boy can succeed in anything. One day he would even marry the princess - he just has to trust in his own destiny. But the king and alchemist Ottokar, however is obsessed only with gold and wealth, seeks to kill the child, by throwing him in a river.

In the young Federal Republic of Germany, which in the late 1950s in politics and justice is still interspersed with only superficially purified Nazi cliques, leads the Hessian Attorney General Fritz Bauer a lonely fight against the coverup of Nazi crimes and the restorative policy of the government Adenauer - he is firmly convinced that only in this way can the young democracy be consolidated. Not only his attitude, but also his temperament make Bauer vulnerable, again and again resistance forms from politics, intelligence services and the judiciary against the lone fighter.

Munich, 1968: 21-year-old Laura, who has emigrated to the USA with her husband Gabriel, returns to her old home in Munich. Laura's father has been killed in a traffic accident a few days earlier. Her younger sister Friede is in a coma. Overwhelmed by the pain, her mother has withdrawn from the outside world. Laura feels abandoned, as she had hoped that the shared grief might help to overcome the tense relationship between her and her mother. Throughout her life, her mother was incapable of empathizing with her children and avoided any physical closeness. When her mother refuses to visit the critically injured Friede in hospital, Laura forces her into a confrontation in the hope of gaining a better understanding of her mother.