Rival gangs are fighting for control of Hamburg's notorious harbor district, spreading fear and terror in the process. In the streets, houses and clubs, the thriller shows the lives of a handful of people whose fates will be decided within 24 hours.

After the death of her husband, Sarah gets caught up in the wheels of the "most sinful mile in the world," Hamburg's Kiez. In this ruthless machinery that produces nothing but violence, money and lust, the sensitive Sarah tries to adapt emotionlessly. It is a long and hard process of acclimation, but eventually the business of love becomes a profession for Sarah. The power of money holds her captive. And the more she succeeds in increasing her value in the milieu, the more she distances herself from her past bourgeois world - along with her concepts of love, decency and morality. An affair almost becomes her undoing. Sarah flees deeper into the labyrinth - onto the path of venal masochism. She becomes a whip-wielding dominatrix in the notorious Herbertstraße. Now the others are the victims, but Sarah almost loses her mind...

A gang wants to rob the local bank by keeping the security guards busy in other ways.

A young woman on the verge of suicide tells her story to a driver who picks her up from the Elbe bridge: in order to free her husband from a blackmailer, she wanted to earn a lot of money through prostitution, but she finds it repulsive.