Art
A young man from the countryside goes to Berlin, where he is robbed by hoodlums. Completely penniless, he meets a prostitute with whom he falls in love, but the pimp wins. In a hopeless situation, he decides to take back what is his by force.
Crime scene: 10th police station. A desolate place on the outskirts of Berlin. Two cops are on duty here. Dieter Stecker - young and hopeful - and Rolf Kaminsky - scrapped and bitter. Kaminsky was once a good cop, but because of a crime he was sent to this deserted precinct. Now he is obsessed with just one idea: to get back at those who hurt him. The compulsion to demonstrate his dwindling strength and vitality turns him into an animal, a devil in human form who only follows his animalistic instincts...
Germany, 1968: The priest's daughters Marianna and Juliane both fight for changes in society, like making abortion legal. However their means are totally different: while Juliane's committed as a reporter, her sister joins a terroristic organization. After she's caught by the police and put into isolation jail, Juliane remains as her last connection to the rest of the world. Although she doesn't accept her sister's arguments and her boyfriend Wolfgang doesn't want her to, Juliane keeps on helping her sister. She begins to question the way her sister is treated.
Frank, a perpetual loser from the "milieu", runs over a pedestrian during an argument with his lover Sabine and commits a hit-and-run. A petty criminal and friend of the dead man, to whom he has confessed his crime, hires him as a "bill collector" and charges him with a murder he committed himself.
A drifting teen slips from petty crime into exploitation on the streets of Hamburg, courted by a self-serving journalist and a predatory pimp, before a doomed romance pushes him toward a desperate armed-robbery scheme he can’t outrun.
The chance encounter between Anne and the much younger Benjamin develops into an infatuation after a cautious flirtation. Both dream and fantasize their very own version of this rapprochement, and the boundaries between reality and imagination become increasingly blurred. Until one day they meet again at Munich Central Station.
Ulrich Mühe plays a German businessman who was born completely without scruples. This makes him an eminently suitable candidate for success in the chaotic years after World War I. The shameless man's story is contrasted with that of his polar opposite, a Jewish anarchist.
