Emma Israel

Martha lives in Hamburg with her young son and makes films with real passion. To stay close to the pulse of society, she has moved in with a Portuguese family. Teresa helps foreigners navigate bureaucracy, while Martha tries to build a romance with Alfred. Their shared everyday life reflects West German realities, captured spontaneously and with sarcastic wit.

After the death of her husband, Sarah gets caught up in the wheels of the "most sinful mile in the world," Hamburg's Kiez. In this ruthless machinery that produces nothing but violence, money and lust, the sensitive Sarah tries to adapt emotionlessly. It is a long and hard process of acclimation, but eventually the business of love becomes a profession for Sarah. The power of money holds her captive. And the more she succeeds in increasing her value in the milieu, the more she distances herself from her past bourgeois world - along with her concepts of love, decency and morality. An affair almost becomes her undoing. Sarah flees deeper into the labyrinth - onto the path of venal masochism. She becomes a whip-wielding dominatrix in the notorious Herbertstraße. Now the others are the victims, but Sarah almost loses her mind...