Ayşe Polat grows up in Hafenstraße in Hamburg in the 1980s. The 15-year-old is surrounded by crime and is quickly pigeonholed by outsiders because of her living situation. However, the criminal environment doesn't say much about the person.
The film tells the story of the everyday life of a large Italian family, the Villano family, who after returning five times to their homeland - a small village near Naples - have decided to stay in Germany forever.
A train is heading for Germany - a train carrying migrant workers. Trains like this have come countless times since the late 1950s, from Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Spain and Portugal, and they have brought with them, along with the people they carried, the dreams and hopes of these people...
Anyone who becomes old and therefore unprofitable apparently belongs in the bin. This ideology is taken at its word. An old man actually ends up on the garbage tip.
