Based on Nikolai Erdman’s banned 1928 comedy play The Suicide, a socially critical grotesque about a man tired of life

After attending a wedding on a steamboat traveling down the river Spree, three friends from Hamburg become stranded in a newly reunified Berlin. They begin a restless odyssey through the wastelands of a metropolis wavering between an unpredictable future and a lingering past.

Harry, a timpanist and pyromaniac, and Ginamove into the same apartment due to Hamburg's housing shortage. This is the beginning of a wonderful enmity, with Harry, who has been tried and tested in marital warfare, and relationship terrorist Gina proving to be quite equal opponents.

Two inmates make written contact through a personal ad that is hidden and found in a pair of work trousers. The pen-pal relationship turns into love, whose future remains uncertain after a personal encounter.