Clara is 39 years old and doing a PhD in philosophy in Berlin. She has mastered the art of rhetoric, conducts research into Hegel and spends what little time remains with her patient teenage daughter Emma who occasionally visits Clara in her flat share in Kreuzberg. And then there’s also the secret affair with one of her students. An undoubtedly challenging life between success, fulfillment, and efficiency. There may be much she thinks about, but not everything by a long shot.

This changes when Clara travels with her daughter to rural Mecklenburg for her mother’s birthday. Suddenly, her past returns and with it the question of how it feels to return to one’s childhood home. All the feelings of nostalgia, but also the long-forgotten conflicts with the villagers that she once left behind for her ambitions and thirst for knowledge. Back in Berlin, Clara senses that it might not be herself who will fulfill her desire for freedom completely, but most likely her daughter’s generation.