On his wanderings, Tom meets young Lizzi and accompanies her to the vacation resort "Im Sonnengrund". The residents there are threatened by a huge garbage dump that will bury them all.

Employees remember the director Max Ophüls, who was forced to emigrate in 1933 - his fifth film "Liebelei" was a great success in cinemas. After an odyssey through France, Italy, the Netherlands and the USA, he returned to work in France and Germany in the 1950s. The film commemorates Ophüls, who died in 1957 at the age of 54, and uses a series of film examples to demonstrate his special way of directing.