Helgoland. Here, on Germany's only offshore island, a small community of survivors of an apocalypse that has overrun the rest of the world and plunged it into chaos is holed up. But the price of their survival is high. The resources on the rocky island are scarce, so that an inhumane "social ranking" system determines the lives of the 513 inhabitants: each islander is evaluated according to his usefulness. The only doctor is high on the list, others are far behind, and they have to fight for their place on the list and their survival. Meanwhile, people from the mainland are trying to get to Helgoland and the Helgolanders have to defend their island.
A snack bar owner smokes with his Muslim neighbor in the stairwell of their apartment building at night. Her husband is his good friend. They draw closer to one another as the nights go on and look out over the city to the dark satellites, the brutalist concrete buildings on the outskirts of the city - relics of the GDR past. A security guard watches over Objekt 95, a satellite town with a residential complex which many foreigners call home. While on patrol at night, he gets to know a young Ukrainian woman who fled her home country when the war broke out. He wants to protect her, while his friend, the “old security guard”, radios to him from an abandoned Russian barrack night after night. A woman from the train cleaning service drinks in a train station bar after her night shift. There, she meets a hairdresser. The two of them become friends and spend many nights together in the station. Every night, her desire grows even greater for this woman who is exactly as lonely as she is.
Martina Gedeck (born 14 September 1961) is a German actress. She came to international fame as the main character in the German films Mostly Martha and The Lives of Others.