Tom, a 17-year-old window design apprentice, dreams about true love. One day, a new girl from East Berlin moves to town. Tom has a crush on her and will do anything to impress her. When he finds out that she plans to become an actress, he even discovers the aspiration to perform himself. For a while, Tom is on cloud 9.

A teenager is found murdered, and the examining doctor recognizes her son's knife. The film works its way back to reveal how this situation came about; a rare treatment of the taboo subject of youth criminality in Socialist society.