Filmmaker and author Helke Sander is an icon not only of the women's movement, but also of new German cinema. Historical upheavals sometimes only need a small impulse to suddenly set petrified conditions in motion. Helke Sander triggered such a landslide-like change in Germany many years ago.

Hanieh, a young teacher, lives in the household of her married sister in Tehran. Increasingly exhausted by her paralysing everyday life and the two-faced reality she subliminally experiences as a woman, an employee, a younger sister, and unhappy partner, Hanieh struggles to find her way out.