Following a nervous breakdown, Rita Seidel returns to her childhood village. While convalescing, she recalls her love affair with Manfred, a chemist ten years her senior. Frustrated by career setbacks in East Germany, Manfred decides to defect to West Berlin, causing Rita to make a drastic decision.

Moody, modernist, and highly provocative for its time, Konrad Wolf’s East German masterpiece follows two lovers in an ideologically divided Berlin. Full of fast cuts and sharp angles, this scandalous adaptation of Christa Wolf’s ’60s novella is an iconic gem in the canon of East German cinema.