In an age of growing uncertainty, nineteen year-old computer hacker Karl Koch sees the world around him as being in disorder. Inspired by the fictional rebel of a cult novel, the sensitive young man begins his search for meaning, which convinces him of a global conspiracy. When Karl and his best friend David infiltrate government and military global data networks, they are motivated to travel to East Berlin to connect with the KGB. Set in the Cold War dystopia of the late 1980s, 23 received special honors at the 1998 Locarno Film Festival.