When Edith Howland's husband abandons her for a younger woman, leaving her with their alcoholic son and his senile uncle, she begins recording details of an imaginary, much more successful life where she has friends and grandchildren. However, this diversion soon grows unhealthy when she becomes slowly convinced that the fantasies are real.

In Berlin in 1961, an American soldier and a German engineer join forces to build a tunnel under the Berlin Wall in order to smuggle out refugees, including the soldier's East German girlfriend.

The life and struggles of the German writer Heinrich von Kleist.