Germany in 1949: The residents of the Thuringian village Hunsdorf are still heavily influenced by archaic superstition and explain unusual events with preternatural powers. The same happens when pigs again and again disappear from different farmyards. The village residents firmly believe that...
On a barren and stormy island, fishing families eke out a meager existence on what they can catch during summer, and what washes ashore during winter. But little has been washing ashore of late, and their situation worsens. Elders recall how twenty years ago, when the lighthouse keeper’s beacon...
The son of a working-class man, Harry Brenner studied medicine at the ABF and quickly made a career as a doctor in Berlin. His lifestyle and his demanding wife swallow up a lot of money, so he takes on any part-time work. After a gross dereliction of duty, he is transferred to Bothenow. He meets...
A Saturday evening dance in the village pub is interrupted when the barn of local farmer Paul Gäbler catches on fire. The farmer himself is soon found – hanged. Sawmill owner Züllich claims that Gäbler committed suicide because he was forced to join an agricultural production cooperative, but...
After 1945, land reform forces Old Kraske to become an agricultural worker, but he continues to work on his own, flatly refusing to join any collective farming activities. He desperately wants a large-scale farm like Kimpel's in order to pass it on to his adored grandson, Tinko. When Kraske's son...
The bricklayer Ulli has received a letter from his girlfriend Sabine asking him to come to her from Berlin as soon as possible. Sabine works as a sales clerk in a small village in the Zittau Mountains near the border with Czechoslovakia. However, when Ulli arrives at the station, Sabine is not...
