A young man from the countryside goes to Berlin, where he is robbed by hoodlums. Completely penniless, he meets a prostitute with whom he falls in love, but the pimp wins. In a hopeless situation, he decides to take back what is his by force.

Turkish migrant Husseyin spends his days in hypnotic routine as a “guest worker” in ‘70s West Berlin, living in a small, shared apartment and commuting daily to his job at a factory pressing machine parts. Diligently saving up his wages he hopes to one day marry and buy a house back home, but his immediate future in Berlin is clouded by indignities at the hands of racist coworkers and botched attempts at romantic intimacy.

A teen girl in 1970s Berlin becomes addicted to heroin. Everything in her life slowly begins to distort and disappear as she befriends a small crew of junkies and falls in love with a drug-abusing male prostitute.