Pete is no stranger to success, delivering hit series as a musician in a rock group. When he parts ways with his band and produces his first solo LP, he learns for the first time what a flop means. He did not expect this. He is insecure and desperate, while Lena, his wife, accepts this low blow as a challenge. Jealously, Pete observes that Lena is becoming more and more independent and self-confident in her surroundings. At home there are arguments until everyone packs his bags. Alone with his longing and tenderness for Lena, Pete composes the "Bolero" on his white grand piano that calls her back.

Nine fictitious documentaries and films reflect the mood of late 1970s Germany, particularly the two-month period in 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped by the RAF (Red Army Faction). The kidnap had been made to orchestrate the release of the original leaders of the RAF, aka the Baader-Meinhof.

Pascale, married to an architect, misses her flight to London and is forced to stay in Berlin, at the Kleinhoff Hotel where she stayed as a student. Karl, a would-be revolutionary lives in the adjoining room and Pascale spies him and his ex-girl-friend through a hole. Then she follows him to a questionable place where she is arrested by the police during a revolutionists raid. When she returns to the Kleinhoff Hotel, Pascale finds Karl crying, and enters his room to console him and they have a love affair.

Hartmut Mackowiak, a German taxi driver, tries to help 6 year old Turkish girl to find her mother.

Nik, a released prisoner who started writing in prison, wants to leave his past behind him, but refuses to contact his former girlfriend and her family. Under the name of his jail buddy Henry, he moves in with his pen pal - who has never seen him - and is always watched suspiciously by their roommate. Nik began writing in prison and now seeks contact with the literary culture, even though he feels disgusted by the pompous fuss of this society. He is not without talent and works on a novel in which he minutely describes the abduction of an industrialist. Henry gets shot at the prison breakout and visits Nik to get help from him. He likes his novel plot and wants to put it into action.

At the top of the mountain stands the beautiful Sternsteinhof farm. Leni, a girl from a poor background, admires this farm and wants to become a farmer's wife there one day to escape her poor circumstances. Toni, the rich owner's son, comes at just the right time. When he gives her a written promise of marriage, Toni's father intervenes. He wants his son to marry a wealthy farmer's daughter and sends him to the army for the next few years. Muckerl, a simple wood carver, seizes his chance and courts Leni's favor...

A German engineer Lutz Kehlmann is to lead a dam project in South America. When he flies over the area of the dam the helicopter crashes and Kehlmann is the only survivor all alone in the jungle.

After many years away, development aid worker Peter Kessel returns to his home town of Gutenbach in 1982. He is astonished to discover that a lot has changed there. Cashless payments are used everywhere and facilities such as screen journals and video telephones have become a matter of course. Kessel tries to adapt to the changed circumstances and encounters difficulties in the process.

A “film-noir” on double identity and role reversal. A man is looking for a woman to love. He finds her in a seedy bar and persuades her to marry him. The day she decides to flee… he kills her. To ward off suspicion, he moves in with the sister of the deceased.