A nurse from Ukraine searches for a better life in Central Europe, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason.

Her mother in Kenya, 13-year-old Melanie spends her summer vacation at a strict diet camp set in the Austrian countryside. Between workouts and nutrition classes, pillow fights and first cigarettes, she falls in love with a doctor 40 years her senior.

Vignettes of the lives of several residents of a Vienna suburb during a heat wave.

For Anna Maria, paradise lies with Jesus, and she devotes her time to door-to-door missionary work. One day after years of absence, her husband, an Egyptian Muslim confined to a wheelchair, comes home—and soon prayers are replaced by fighting.

On the beaches of Kenya they’re known as "Sugar Mamas" —European women who seek out African boys selling love to earn a living. Teresa, a 50-year-old Austrian and mother of a daughter entering puberty, travels to this vacation paradise, moving from beach to beach.

In 1943, as Hitler continues to wage war across Europe, a group of college students mount an underground resistance movement in Munich. Dedicated expressly to the downfall of the monolithic Third Reich war machine, they call themselves the White Rose. One of its few female members, Sophie Scholl is captured during a dangerous mission to distribute pamphlets on campus with her brother Hans. Unwavering in her convictions and loyalty to the White Rose, her cross-examination by the Gestapo quickly escalates into a searing test of wills as Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility.

Matthias is a master of pretense, from cultured boyfriend to perfect son or marital coach. He makes a career of being someone else. The real challenge begins when he has to be himself.

In 1750 Austria, a deeply religious woman named Agnes has just married her beloved, but her mind and heart soon grow heavy as her life becomes a long list of chores and expectations. Day after day, she is increasingly trapped in a murky and lonely path leading to evil thoughts, until the possibility of committing a shocking act of violence seems like the only way out of her inner prison.

When Andreas arrives in the remote valley in the Austrian Alps, he is only about four years old - nobody knows for sure. He grows up to become a skilled farmhand and, as a young man, joins a work crew that builds one of the first mountain railroads, bringing light and noise to the valley along with electricity. He also finds the love of his life in Marie, but their happiness is short-lived. Only many years later, when Andreas embarks on his final journey, she is with him once again. And in amazement Andreas looks back at all the years that lie behind him.