In the face of the bucket wheel excavators in the brown coal mining area eating their way through the muddy Rhineland soil, the Lange family is at a crossroads: what do we do when the old has to go and the new is so uncertain? The young entrepreneur Marcel Lange, hungry for success, wants to build a new high-end village and achieve social advancement. To this end, he has already had the prototype Villa Verena built on the edge of the open-cast mine, where the largest renaturalized lake in the world is to be created in just a few years. But his sister Franca is against it. In the old village, which is about to be demolished, she is holding the fort and tinkering in the basement on an electricity storage unit that will supply all the houses with green energy in the future and make them self-sufficient. In the midst of this chaos, widow and mother Angelika Lange has other plans. She wants to finally take a vacation with the relocation bonus and doesn't always want to worry about others.

Ava and her girlfriend Sascha are fighting for a tolerant world. When Ava's father comes to stay with them, their own tolerance is tested.

Sandra, a young mother-to-be, fights to have her child stay with her after birth while she serves a prison sentence for aggravated assault.