For Ursula Gothe, the wife of the up-and-coming engineer Dr. Richard Gothe, life in the post-war period is finally back on track. That changes when she rediscovers her daughter Martina, who she thought was dead, in a wanted ad. Ursula is stunned with joy, but also very scared: the girl is from a man she met during the war, before her time with Richard. Now Richard is about to be promoted to factory manager and does not want to be discredited because of an illegitimate child.

Based on a true story, Miguel Alexandre's two-part drama focuses on an East German woman and the fight for her children. Spring 1982: Sara Bender, living with her daughters Silvia and Sabine in the East German town of Erfurt, wants to marry her colleague Peter, but shortly before the wedding, her father is killed in a road accident. As the funeral takes place in West Germany, she isn't allowed to got there, so she starts planning to leave her communist home country forever. Trying to flee via Romania, she is caught by the secret service. After years in jail, Sara is ransomed by the West German government, but without her daughters. To draw the world's attention on her desperate situation, she starts demonstrating at the Berlin border crossing Checkpoint Charlie