Peter Weiss’ monumental 1965 stage play, among the greatest artworks on the Holocaust, condenses the testimonies of witnesses and the accused during the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963-1965. This ultra-faithful film adaptation builds, across four hours, in its intensity and graphically described detail.
Bruno and Katja Bassmann are on their way to the Côte d'Azur. During a stopover at a bistro, Katja disappears without a trace. Bruno is convinced that she has been kidnapped. But neither the police nor the embassy can help. Only the German-speaking taxi driver Aliya supports him in his search. They get caught up in a murderous network that leads straight to the underworld.
On a Berlin construction site, the former editor-in-chief Karin and her journalist Rommy happens to witness a fatal accident. From Taras, the accident victim's brother, they learn that this is not an isolated coincidence: The Eastern European workers who toil on the construction site for cheap wages have to do their day's work under the most precarious conditions and beyond give a large part of their wages to shady "intermediaries".