The end of real-socialist oppression, doomed love and tacit double morals unfold in colourful felt-pen images and clear lines. Leipzig, 1989. The city still belongs to the blue shirts of the Free German Youth, there is still talk of a flourishing country in festive speeches. Locked away in a mental hospital for belonging to the Leipzig punk scene and abused as “belonging to an enemy faction” that undermines the GDR from within: Margarethe can stand it. Ultimately, however, the lack of briquettes and the cold water in the communal shower make the young woman dream of being close to her boyfriend Heinrich. While the protests in the streets are growing, Heinrich and his band play church-organised punk concerts that hint at the prospect of freedom. But Stasi spies are more present than ever – until the newly gained freedom to travel scatters them to the winds along with the lights of the fireworks.

In 1945, the Red Army are advancing on German territory, the Second World War is drawing to an end. Families are still trying to escape to America, but many plans fail. Five-year-old Sophie also loses her father and mother during the flight. They are killed by Nazi officer Scharf and a Soviet soldier named Vasily, with Hitler Youth Beckmann as a witness. The gruesome event takes place in an extremely strange hotel which henceforth will bind the four survivors to its premises in bizarre ways, no matter which rooms of the truly scary building they find themselves in. Up in the lounge, where the new customers arrive one by one, down in the kitchen, where the now grown-up Sophie prepares food, or even in an alcove near the elevator shaft, where Beckmann hides with the rats. The involuntary permanent guests age but never tire of courting Sophie.
Heinrich Sabl has built an excitingly disturbing dollhouse decorated with quotes from reality for the German-Soviet history of guilt and coping. In his first feature-length animated film, on which the director worked for more than twenty years, he sends extraordinary characters on an equally extraordinary visual and acoustic time journey through the war-damaged suites of the 20th century.