Suburban summer heat. Merit, Eva, Lion, Rose and David cautiously wind around their conflicted relationships. They talk, but their words don’t meet. They play theatre while rehearsing their lives. The garden needs watering. Fears of the future and traces of violence relentlessly press into the present. A narrative of the beauty and gravity that arise from discovering our individual truths.
In the summer of 1989, the sister of Hamburg's LKA chief Thomas Bethge disappears without a trace. For almost three decades, he investigates the mysterious criminal case, before he gets on the trail of a serial killer.
Franz and Lilly run their father's cattle farm together. While Franz is perfectly happy with his life as a cowboy, Lilly dreams of a bigger life. That's when she meets Chris, a musician, with whom she starts a romantic affair.
Nineteen-year-old David dreams of being a concert pianist on the international stage. Although his talent made him special in his home town, he soon realizes that at the conservatory he is but one of many talented students.
Just as 16-year-old Miki Witt is about to steal a few beers, he witnesses Lebanese clan boss Ahmed Sayed shooting an LKA officer. Even though the teenager is aware that he was seen doing it, he still decides to testify as a key witness. This is a difficult and courageous decision for his parents Nikola Walter and Klaus Witt, who live apart, and at the same time a great burden for everyone. In order to protect the family, the young police officer Sarah Brandt and her colleagues Marleen Westermann and Mario Lobeck are assigned to monitor the case. Despite all precautions, disaster strikes on site.
In 1990 the head of the Treuhand, Hans-Georg Dahlmann, was targeted by the RAF. When he made Sandra Wellmann, mother of one son, his assistant, he had no idea what additional danger he was exposing himself to. Because Wellmann is doing common cause with RAF members Bettina Pohlmann and Klaus Gelfert and is supposed to provide them with information for the planned attack on Dahlmann.
As a divorced father of two teenage daughters, with a head-strong ex-wife for a best friend, too many peculiar patients to keep up with and a new dog, psychotherapist Max certainly doesn't need another challenge. But when Sophie, a compulsive gambler with a boyfriend problem, regularly shows up late for her appointments, she rocks his world in ways he's not ready for.
Paul Bacher is in crisis. If he could feel in the past as one of the most influential writers of his generation, he has long lacked ideas and impetus for a new great work. His reading tours are becoming more and more a sad affair with too much alcohol and too little public. Then Paul overflows in a drunken hitchhiker, flees first scared and later removes the body, without talking to anyone about the experience. But something is flowing in its interior. Paul starts to write again. The criticism is done, but the story about the death of a hitchhiker also arouses suspicion.
Anton Schneider says goodbye to his wife Luise in tears and dies. Schneider was seriously ill with multiple sclerosis and was diagnosed by neurologist Dr. Hoffer medically treated. Luise Schneider reports the doctor and accuses him of incorrect treatment of her husband, which ultimately led to his death. The mandate against Dr. Hoffer takes over Dominique Kuster, who entrusts her employee Thomas Borchert with the investigation.
Between forests and hills, the river Ahr meanders through a mystical, foggy autumn landscape. Amidst this idyll a man awakens in the middle of a vineyard. He does not know who he is, where he is or how he came to be here. Next to him is a dead young woman lying among the vines. As a foreigner in the secluded town in the Ahr valley he enters an archaic village community, which seems to keep a secret from him.