Generosity, weakness for expensive pleasures and ruin is a combination that does not bode well. Johann Friedrich von Allmen was a man with a taste for women and the expensive pleasures of life. Unfortunately, his luck has run out, but now a new opportunity presents itself.

A stage actor's turn as GDR leader Erich Honecker inspires an outlandish scheme to keep his daughter safe during the Leipzig protests of 1989.

Julian is a psychiatric patient and wants to walk from Berlin to southern Germany. He believes that through the power of walking he can heal his friend's father, who has died of a heart condition. First, he runs into Ju, a young doctor, who he soon meets again by chance. She feels unhappy, searches for her heart and spontaneously joins the likeable dreamer on his way to Tuttlingen, where the sick man lives. In a tourist resort, they are joined by a frustrated wife and mother.

Shortly before his retirement, Gustav Wanzka wants to return to his beloved profession as a teacher after years of working as a district school inspector. As soon as he arrives at the station, he meets the boy Norbert Kniep, his future pupil, who clearly surprises him with his questions. He wants to encourage the pupil, who is considered uncomfortable to the teachers but is very gifted in mathematics. With his highly personal views on educational goals, Wanzka stands in stark contrast to his teaching staff. Any innovations and even positive conflicts are nipped in the bud, and thus the pupils are ultimately educated to mediocrity.

Carola Weber is shocked when her husband Jochen introduces his new colleague from the hospital: she knows this voice. Hearing it catapults Carola back to the worst time of her life, her imprisonment in the GDR women's prison Hoheneck. She is convinced that Prof. Wolfgang Limberg was the doctor who treated her there with psychotropic drugs in order to force her to testify, and thus caused her to lose two fingers while working on the conveyor belt. Carola's career as a pianist was over forever.

Thirteen German directors present short films exploring the state of their country.

Based on the story of Jesse Owens, the athlete whose quest to become the greatest track and field athlete in history thrusts him onto the world stage of the 1936 Olympics, where he faces off against Adolf Hitler's vision of Aryan supremacy.

A police officer is forced to use her service weapon and tries to come to terms with the fact that she has killed a man.

The dream of owning a house in the countryside comes true by chance for a family with two children. The parents buy "a house in need of slight renovation" at auction, but have obviously overstretched themselves in several ways. Of all things, the supposed snag in this house, which was nevertheless purchased at a low price, is two strange old neighbors who soon turn out to be a blessing for the family...