The border between Germany and Poland, formed by the river Oder, provides an intriguing setting for this exploration of the boundaries of national and personal identities. Director Hans-Christian Schmid interweaves five narrative threads: a group of Ukrainian refugees beg and bargain for entry to the “golden West”; a businessman loses everything he owns only to find something of much greater value; a young cigarette smuggler defies his father and brother to free the girl he loves from a detention center; an interpreter risks her career and her freedom to help an illegal refugee; and an architect meets his former girlfriend and discovers that they have both changed too much to find common ground. With a deep humanist empathy, Schmid provides a sensitive yet realist portrait of characters searching for individual freedom in an often hostile world.