After being one of the most successful filmmakers in Europe in the sixties, Vojtech Jasny (Czech Republic, 1925) lives in a small apartment in New York. For Jasny, life and cinema are inseparable concepts. By visiting friends who still live in Life and Film Jasny first person will have their own history and some decisive events in his life: the Nazi invasion and subsequent Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, exile and his arrival in New York years later.

West Germany in the 1970s. Many artists, journalists and intellectuals were branded as sympathizers of Baader-Meinhof's left-wing terrorism. The parents of the director, too: Margarethe von Trotta and his stepfather, Volker Schlöndorff. With extensive archive materials and film clips as well as Margarethe von Trotta's private diaries the film portrays one German family and the society of the time.