What could be better than knowing your future? And what could be worse? A love-filled childhood abruptly ends when catastrophe descends. A catastrophe that the child had foreseen yet failed to act upon.

When the seven-year-old daughter of an architect falls ill with a rare but curable form of cancer, the family wants to give the child the best possible treatment. Unfortunately, they decide against chemotherapy in favor of a gentle natural remedy. When the hospital doctors notice that the child's condition is deteriorating, the necessary race against time can only begin once the parents are convinced of the effectiveness of conventional therapy.

Ironies abound in this extremely sad melodrama about Elif, a Turkish immigrant in Germany who has been sent to prison for murdering her abusive husband. At the time of her imprisonment, she has never ventured outside the Turkish community, and even there has had no friends because of the demands her husband placed on her. She speaks no German. Now, in a place which most people find to be hell on earth, she gains a never-before known taste of freedom among these strangers, who don't even speak her own language. Unfortunately, as a "guest worker," she is horrified to discover that she is soon to be transferred to the horrific prisons of Turkey and will stand trial there for her crime, which will be much less understandingly dealt with in her home country than it would have been in Germany. The false paradise she must say goodbye to is her German prison.

About Icelandic composer Jon Leifs (1899-1968) who spent much of his life in Germany before WWII. The film begins in the 1930s after he has married the daughter of an industrialist, Annie, who is also a concert pianist. This era was frustrating for Leifs because his works were seldom performed. Iceland's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1995