Armin Steeb is adrift: just finished with school, living with his middle-class parents, clueless about finding work. He tries connecting with a girl, he engages in risky sex with strangers in public toilets, he goes to job interviews. He also sends an anonymous letter to a local Munich newspaper, claiming responsibility for a fatal road accident. He fitfully pursues notoriety as he goes through life nearly without affect. What will it take to get Armin to smile?

Jakob and Annette are on their way to Arved. An "alumni party" is being held there with fellow students. Host Arved is now a successful politician who has offered the previously unsuccessful journalist Jakob an attractive job. But when Annette sees Arved's wheelchair-bound wife Diana, she just wants to get away.

Two misfit males, one man-child, one boy, find each other, building a small cabin in the woods to create a new life. Their daily struggle for survival creates a strong bond between them until the hut is destroyed and one of the boys carted off. The former psychiatric patient is told that his friend was just a figment of his imagination, but this provokes him to fight back and prove the boy's existence.

As an advisor to the Federal Chancellor, political scientist Sara M. Kardow quickly learns the difference between political theory and practice. The Chancellor hands Sara incriminating evidence. Unexpectedly, she soon has great political influence herself: Nothing less than the fate of the Chancellor lies in her hands...

As Tobias, a young director, supposes that his girl-friend Ellen had an affair with his brother Markus, front man of "Hansen", one year ago, he decides to shoot a documentary about the band's next tour. When Ellen joins the project, everybody's emotions boil over, although they are observed all the time.