For years, Martin has been working on his great play about cloud castles, flying pirates and a feisty princess. His secret role model for the leading character is his good friend Isabel, a cheeky young woman who is waging war on genetically modified seeds around the world. And she is leaving tomorrow to go to the middle of Africa for the next three years.

Kathleen Selchow has been working as an educator in a daycare center for many years and leads a harmonious life with her husband Robert and son Luca, who goes to elementary school. The experienced educator takes charge of the motley group of children on an excursion to the nearby forest. Suddenly, Kathleen notices that two children, Jenny and Nico, are missing. A dramatic search with a tragic outcome begins. From one minute to the next, nothing in Kathleen's life is as it was.

It was one of the great crimes of the Second World War: from 1941 to 1944, a total of 872 days, the siege and starvation of Leningrad by the German Wehrmacht on Hitler's orders lasted. Over a million people fell victim to the blockade, most of them dying of hunger. Countless of these starving people wrote diaries with the last of their strength, and cameramen filmed in the paralyzed city. Evidence from the hell of the siege, many of the film recordings, but above all the written memories on which this documentary on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation is based, remained under lock and key after the war. The voices of those who had suffered through this terrible time should not be heard by anyone, because they did not fit the pathos of the Leningrad heroic song that was officially sung. Most of the recordings come from women. The writers feared neither the enemy nor the Communist Party or Stalin, who often proved incompetent in providing for the population.

No marriage without a break, no career without a crisis: writer Max Mangold experiences both. First, the highly successful author of fiery heartbreak novels under the pseudonym Jana van Hausten suffers a severe writer's block, then his wife Susanne tells him that she wants to go to Rostock University for a year - ostensibly for the sake of her career. Coincidentally, her old childhood sweetheart, the fisherman Jörn, also lives there. Without further ado and driven by jealousy, Max travels there to fight for his marriage. And then he has a fateful encounter with hairdresser Nancy, who is a hardcore fan of Jana van Hausten.

On her 50th birthday, devoted mother and laundry worker Beate faces a life-changing medical diagnosis that prompts her to pursue a long-buried dream: swimming the English Channel. Juggling her daughter’s exams, granddaughter’s care, her son and his pregnant partner, and her best friend’s love life, she throws herself into grueling training. Amid familial resistance, and with friend Henni’s support, Beate braves the Dover–Calais crossing and rediscovers her own strength.

A coming-of-age tale with a difference about the grumpy doctor Annebarbel Buschhaus donning her ice skates again at the age of 58 after an absence of 40 years. Back on the ice, she tries to revive long suppressed childhood dreams – and makes a new friend, Jolina Kuhn, Berlin’s youth figure skating champion. Through her new friend, Annebarbel begins to open up and break away from her dominant mother.

Berlin Kreuzberg: Veit Bischoff keeps his head above water with a dry-cleaning business and reluctantly looks after his mentally disturbed mother on the side. His dreary everyday life is only brightened up a little by his flirtation with the cashier from the betting shop opposite. In an environment where violence, drugs and crooked deals are the order of the day, Veit dreams of emigrating to Australia.

The film is set in post-war Germany. It tells the story of widow Rosemarie Hermann, who flees Silesia with her sister Bettina, her father, and their two children Maria and Johannes ("Jojo"). In the general chaos, she loses her daughter. In her attempt to find her, she finally receives support from Harald Bergmann, who works for the tracing service of the German Red Cross and also finds her a job there. Maria initially lives in a children's home near Lübeck and is then placed with a foster family.