The engineer Rosalie leads a life without standing still. She doesn't feel old for a long time, only mature. When Rosalie returns to Germany after a fainting spell at a solar project in Africa, it's just supposed to be a breather. When she shows up at her bourgeois sister Margret's with a huge container, she is not very enthusiastic about the surprise visit. The retired teacher sees right through that Rosalie isn't staying with her voluntarily. The well-travelled woman is broke! It seems like a miracle that there are a huge chunk of banknotes in a hole in the wall of the room. On the other side of the wall there is the room of the highly talented high school graduate Karla, who rents a part of Margret's house with her father Harald. After a failed first meeting, Rosalie befriends with the wheelchair-bound teenager and sets her mind on getting Karla out of her sheltered isolation, even against her will.

A family of a German linguist lives with an indigenous tribe in Papua New Guinea.

During World War II, Switzerland severely limited refugees: "Our boat is full." A train from Germany halts briefly in an isolated corner of Switzerland. Six people jump off seeking asylum: four Jews, a French child, and a German soldier. They seek temporary refuge with a couple who run a village inn. They pose as a family: the deserter as husband, Judith as his wife, an old man from Vienna as her father, his granddaughter and the French lad, whom they beg to keep silent, as their children. Judith's teenage brother poses as a soldier. The fabrication unravels through chance and the local constable's exact investigation. Whom will the Swiss allow to stay? Who gets deported?

Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him.