Biologist Nelly Senff is desperate to escape her life in East Berlin. The Russian father of her two children has supposedly committed suicide, and she wants to leave behind the prying eyes of the Stasi. Nelly pretends she'll marry a West German, who drives her, Katya and Aleksei across the border. But the West is not all Nelly has hoped for, and she finds the same levels of suspicion and surveillance that drove them from the East in the first place. Nelly and her children are held in Marienfelde, a processing centre and no-man's land between East and West. All lives cross here, and the cramped confines of the camp breed defamation, violence and a total lack of privacy. There's Krystyna, the Polish woman who hopes in vain that medical treatment in the West will save her dying brother; Hans Pischke, the troubled actor released from prison in the East; and John Bird, a CIA man monitoring the refugees for possible Stasi spies.