Katharina Eckerfeld

15-year-old Elise is longing for a happy family life, but her mother Betty is weak and egocentric. She drowns her problems in alcohol. Everything seems to turn out good when they meet Ludwig. But he does not fall in love with Betty, he loves Elise.

Based on the childhood memories of actor Michael Degen, the movie deals with the everyday struggle to survive as a Jewish boy in Nazi Germany. As his father had died in 1940 after being released from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Michael and his mother fear to be deported themselves. They manage to live in Berlin with false names and faked papers, hidden by several, often broken, people...

Jonas is in his mid-twenties, still lives with his parents and gets dumped by his girlfriend. He soon gets to know Lena, a tough young woman with ideals, and immediately falls in love with her. However, to prove he is worthy of her love, he has to pass an endurance test.

Mimmi is a very lonely girl, not knowing what to do with her life. On the search for friends and boyfriends, she wanders around alone in different cities.

Much has been said and written about the Mann family. However, there has never been a film that brings this remarkable family to life in such a playful way. Through the docudrama format developed by Heinrich Breloer, we become direct witnesses to moving stories that no one has heard before. Stories of passion, love, and hate, of war and emigration, of tragic intertwining of personal and world historical events. The Mann family shows itself as it has never been seen before. They all appear: the brothers Thomas and Heinrich with their lifelong sibling rivalry, the extroverted siblings Erika and Klaus, the quiet Golo, and also the only child of Thomas Mann still alive today: Elisabeth.