The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp.

A young man finds himself on a wide open field. He watches a group of people working hard to find something in this wasteland. But is what he sees true, or at least real? Then, the next thought floods his mind and he is taken by it. A memory of his father. The track through his memory leads him to an emotional day with his father, back then. Until the story begins to suffocate him and his younger self determines to escape, eventually landing at a familiar wide open field. Now the past and the present are intertwined and reality molts into a new and fantastic perspective.

The day begins like a nightmare: Sybille Thalheim wakes up in a strange hotel room with a bloodstained knife in her hand.

Tom does not have it easy. At the student theater, his friend Jan and his beloved Annelie play the leading roles; the inconspicuous Tom, on the other hand, makes the prop. When he realizes that he must finally take his life, and especially love, into his own hands, he turns to his janitor, Mr Müller. What Tom does not know: Müller was once a psychologist of the Stasi! In the so-called "Romeo" program, he prepared male agents to address women in Germany and make them available as a source.

In a small town in 1970s West Germany, Stephanie is raised by two parents who have no business having children. The mother suffers from an unspecified medical condition—one both mental and physical. The father makes it clear that he has no patience for his daughter. Young Stephanie takes solace in exploring the mysteries hidden away in the increasingly untidy house, particularly the trunk full of her grandfather’s butcher’s equipment; older Stephanie takes far more sinister comfort in the tools found therein.

The lonely employment office worker Ute meets the easy-going and jobless guy Jens in a cuddle group.