Thomas Brasch was born as a German-Jewish emigrant in England in order to move to the young GDR with his family at the beginning of the 1950s. His father Horst is primarily interested in helping to build the new German state. But Thomas prefers to realize himself as a writer and in doing so discovers his potential as a poetic rebel. His very first play was banned and soon afterwards he lost his place at the film school. When the tanks of the Soviet Union roll through the Czech capital Prague in 1968, Brasch and his girlfriend Sanda and other students try to call for protest in the streets of Berlin - and fail. His own father betrays him to the Stasi and allows Thomas to go to prison. After being paroled, he continues to try his hand at poet writing about love, revolt and death. In the GDR, however, you don't want to have anything to do with someone like him.

Five houses, one bus stop, cows and nothing but fields. 24-year-old Christin lives on the farm of her long-term boyfriend Jan. The exciting post-reunification years that defined her childhood are long gone. Her relationship is loveless. She keeps the cherry liqueur close at hand. In the shimmering heat of summer, time seems to stand still – until 46-year-old wind energy engineer, Klaus, arrives.

Because of the power of love, the last year of Franz Kafka's life becomes his happiest. The well-known writer has never before been able to allow himself to experience intimacy, he suffers from tuberculosis and is dependent on his overbearing family. In the summer of 1923, he met Dora Diamant in the seaside resort Graal-Müritz on the Baltic Sea coast, where he is convalescing and she is working in a Jewish Volksheim. He is a man of world, the 14 years younger woman is from the deep East, he can write, she can dance. She has both feet firmly on the ground, he is always hovering a little above it. She embraces the indicative, he gets tangled up in the conjunctive. But the worldly wise Dora accepts him as he is. And he accepts her. Together they go to Berlin and when Franz's health deteriorates rapidly, to a sanatorium in Austria. They are granted a single year together until Franz Kafka's health deteriorates incurable. However their year together allows them to feel the glory of life.

37-year-old Michael Grothe is a German teacher at a secondary school in Berlin. Not an easy job. But Grothe loves his job, he is a committed teacher - too committed, because his private life is suffering as a result. His marriage has broken down, and his budding relationship with his colleague Lisa Kranz hardly stands a chance against the passion with which Grothe is a teacher. His class is the most important thing to him. The difficult Nico is particularly close to Grothe's heart. He doesn't want to give up on him and tries to encourage him. In doing so, he gets too involved with him and oversteps both Nico's and his own boundaries. He not only loses contact with the other pupils in his class, but also with his own life.

Dima, a petty criminal, is in constant fear of his imminent deportation from Germany.This fear he compensated by carelessness. As he meets one day Sarah, who is working on a documentary about young foreigners, he becomes the main subject of the film. Sarah offers him shelter in her loft, and the two of them get emotionally tied up.

Anja Altmann disappears after a birthday party. When the police ask husband Thomas about her , family attorney and friend Lavinia Bertok manage to dispel any suspicions about him. But soon Thomas is arrested. While the Altmann family start hurling accusations and recriminations at each other, Anja allegedly surfaces in Spain, raising a strange suspicion against Lavinia.

In today’s Friesland, Fuchs, a food inspector in the district, is always in a good mood and committed to investigating North German snack bars. He dreams of a career in Hamburg, for which he works hard. But his superior at the public order office, Sigmar Koch, asks Fuchs to do him a special favor: he has to accommodate his brother Tillmann, a bad-tempered drunk.

Like every year, Gerald and Gundula celebrate Christmas with the whole family. But Christmas Eve turns into a disaster in which Gundula loses his nerve. It was not to be expected that her mother and mother-in-law would warm up the old stories and that her husband Gerald would not even be able to put up the Christmas tree. Gerald didn't want to have Christmas with the family from the start. Gundula's religious brother Hadi and wife Rose are notoriously annoying.