Ingrid Resch

Across generations, a single instrument connects people from different eras - from an emigrating zither player in the Bavarian Forest in 1881, to the persecuted and the lovers of the 20th century, to a deaf young woman in present-day Munich - weaving them into a polyphonic, musical hymn to memory, loss, and solidarity.

Based on H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time, this is the story of a professor who suffers a seizure which results in total amnesia. As he recuperates he is so different his family deserts him. He gathers knowledge of things outside his specialty for five years, then has another seizure. When he reawakens he is himself again, but now he has no memory of the five years between the attacks. He begins having bizarre dreams, and tries to find out what he was doing during the five years he can't remember. What he discovers, combined with the growing reality of his dreams, convinces him that something much darker than a mere personality shift was going on.

The young unskilled worker Günter is employed in a foundry and spends his free time with friends of the same age. Together they form a motorcycle gang. But then Günter meets the daughter of an authorized signatory, Gisela, whose parents do not take kindly to the allegedly indecent young man. Gisela takes flight and introduces Günter to her parents on the spur of the moment so that they can overcome their prejudices. But it comes to a violent quarrel between Gisela's father and Günter...

The owner of a hotel at the river of a lake lives deeply embittered since his girlfriend disappeared in mysterious circumstances more than 20 years ago. But when one day he sees on television a young woman with a remarkable resemblance to her, he decides to hire her. Her presence increases his sick obsession to recover his lost love.

Rita Schuhmacher works in a music publishing house in Munich and is once again without a steady boyfriend. Then one day the dapper lawyer Paul shows up at her publishing house. And instead of suing her, he falls in love with Rita and she with him. The first major problems in their relationship arise when he introduces his girlfriend to his posh parents. They don't think much of the unmannerly Rita.