A young refugee struggles with learning the German language while being existentially at the mercy of the bureaucratic system. Receiving an overwhelming amount of letters from the authorities triggers fears and war memories in him. Reality and imagination blur, raising the question of what is still "real" and what is "fictional" in his everyday life.
A lonely seamstress receives a strange request: to sew a cloak made only from the wings of moths. Her client soon disappears, but maybe she has one more chance to get it right this time. A philosophical fairy tale about humans and moths, both lost in the lights of the world.
Young Roman and his mother Oksana leave Ukraine and go to Germany, where she works illegally while they both live with Gert, an old widower who tries to befriend Roman, who struggles for his mother's attention and sees Gert as a rival.
The ambitious scientist Franz Walter doesn't hesitate when he is promised a professorship at the university. He immediately accepts, pledges absolute loyalty to the system and agrees to work for the GDR's foreign intelligence service until he can take up his new position. Together with his colleague Dirk, he is sent on foreign assignments to West Germany. Franz soon has to use blackmail to get innocent people to talk. But his superiors go even further: GDR refugees and their relatives are targeted to be psychologically destroyed, forged letters, medical diagnoses, surveillance and wiretapping are on the agenda. However, this is more than Franz can bear: he feels powerless and increasingly isolates himself. When he then decides to steal secret documents for a later defection to the West, this results in an unfortunate chain reaction leading to his arrest and ultimately to his execution...