“Emmett − Tief in meinem Herzen” (“Emmett – Deep in My Heart”) is a film with theatrical elements, telling the story of the 14-year-old Black teenager Emmett Till, who became the victim of a racist murder in Mississippi, USA, in 1955. This murder is considered the spark for the civil rights movement in the USA as well as a global, public-media confrontation with racism. Emmett’s story is not an exclusively Black or American story. Emmett had to die because he (allegedly) whistled after a White woman, while his killers were acquitted by an all-male, all-White jury, only to openly admit to the murder in an interview a short time later. “Cases like Emmett's are repeated in Germany and around the world. They affect us all – they are the stories of each and every one of us. Almost 70 years after Emmett Till’s murder, we live in a world that is still shaped by structural racism.

Helen is a nonconformist teenage girl who maintains a conflictual relationship with her parents. Hanging out most of her time with her friend Corinna, with whom she breaks one social taboo after another, she uses sex as a way to rebel and break the conventional bourgeois ethic. After an intimate shaving accident, Helen ends up in the hospital where it doesn’t take long before she makes waves. But there she finds Robin, a male nurse who will sweep her off her feet...