After his father is murdered by the Nazis in 1938, a young Viennese Jew named Ferry Tobler flees to Prague, where he joins forces with another expatriate and a sympathetic Czech relief worker. Together with other Jewish refugees, the three make their way to Paris, and, after spending time in a French prison camp, eventually escape to Marseille, from where they hope to sail to a safe port.

It is about brawls, prostitution, a prison escapee, murder and manslaughter. The film wants to be documentary, the director himself appears as moderator and interviewer.

A boy who was once a perpetual outcast finds friends in a new boarding school, united with his new peers gets involved in a heated rivalry with a group of students from a neighboring school.

A man from Ostfriesland travels to Hamburg and sets course for America on a steamship to conquer this New World as well. What he leaves behind is a swath of devastation, a breach of confusion, a Milky Way full of music, a dead end full of mad jokes and perhaps a touch too much wordplay at the expense of others. But what is worst of all: he has also made a film about it!

Cupid, the God of love, gets the order to unite two people. On Earth, Otto fails as a street musician because his guitar breaks. While buying a new string, his hand gets stuck in the purse of Tina, who works at the Dr. Bayerle beauty farm. When she enters the subway, the purse is teared off and Otto is hit by Cupid's arrow. Now he wants to give back her purse at the doctor's conference.

The former waiter Ernst Held believes himself to be called higher and seeks self-realization as a poet. When he recites poems to his wife's beautician in an ambiguous situation, his wife puts him out the door. Completely destitute, the thwarted poet must therefore return to the lowlands of life and become the head in the Munich pub "Goldener Löffel".

A strange, red circle appears on the neck of a man saved from the guillotine. What is its mysterious meaning? Tragically, it turns out to be something of a family curse, as each generation thereafter bears the same sign, which in turn leads to blackmail and murder.

French writer recalls her start as the country wife of a Paris publisher who called her erotic work his own.

Bank director Ernst Rose, owner of the Hamburg bank Traven & Co., is asked to go to the airport earlier than expected to pick up his daughter Silvia. When he arrives, he realizes too late that he has walked into a trap. He is overpowered by kidnappers and abducted. The gang around Alexander Ford and his men want to rob three and a half million from the bank vault at the weekend. But it can only be opened with four keys, which are in the hands of four so-called key holders. Under the direction of criminal Ford, all those involved become puppets in a game of life and death.

Steven Dyer, an executive working for a giant multinational drugs company, decides to report his employer for breaches of Common Market trading regulations. One night in Basle, Switzerland, he leaves his home to post a letter, the start of a nightmare journey that leads to terrible consequences for his life, his career and for his wife and children.