The hungarian revolution 1956. Judith, an Austrian and her Hungarian friend, Taddek, want to escape to Austria. A friend of theirs, a Viennese photographer, helps organize their escape. Taddek doesn't appear at the arranged meeting place, so Judith and the photographer leave without him. Years pass without a word from Taddek..

In October 1936, a high official in the Austrian government receives a letter from a German Jewish woman with whom he had an affair in 1925 asking him to help place an 11-year-old, half Jewish boy in a good Austrian school. Is the child his? Should he help? And above all should he help now, at a time when Nazis are becoming powerful in Austria?

After his first day at school 6 year old Hugo doesn't want to continue to go to this "institution". He appeals to God to become a grown up, who fulfills his wish and lets him experience life as an adult in the body of his father, a police physician. When Hugo falls under suspicion of having failed in his profession he again turns to God.

Elisabeth, a fifty year old woman, visits her old father in the outskirts of Klagenfurt. There, she reflects about her childhood and her romantic life.