Using unpublished and newly digitalised archive footage and film material, Bettina Böhler has brilliantly assembled this film about the life and work of the exceptional artist Christoph Schlingensief, who died in 2010.
Focuses on three very different siblings, all searching for happiness. Hans-Jörg is a sex addicted librarian, who is interested in young students. Werner is a successful politician with a dysfunctional family. Agnes, a trans woman, works as a table dancer in a night club. The three brothers just have one thing in common: their longing for a happy life.
Before WWII: Dr. Hasenbein lives with his son Peter in a small town. Aunt Uschi's orphanage houses many children and a hamster. When the hamster falls ill, Dr. Hasenbein is given something to do. The tailor, Mr. Voss, is also treated by Dr. Hasenbein: for tendinitis. During the war, Dr. Hasenbein has to go away. When he comes back after 30 years, everything has changed...
Tommie is the absolute loser in his home district of Cologne-Kalk: no money, no apartment of his own, no girlfriend. In the exhaust workshop where he toils, the foreman is constantly angry with him. But Tommie is in a great mood: The video freak dreams enthusiastically through the fantasy world of film art, preferably with the bust sex star Gianna S. in the leading role. Tommie collects exhaust pipes. When he steals a particularly capital specimen from Jupp's swank Mercedes, he gets into real trouble. He has no choice but to return the exhaust to Jupp, but his deadly ultimatum of procuring a case of the rare beer brand "Ramsdorfer Kölsch" by seven o'clock in the evening proves to be insanely difficult. Because at the very same time, "Gianna S." is expected in town...
The dreaded Doc Snyder returns home after 30 years. After his long ride through the prairies of the wild west, his laundry is extremely dirty, and who could wash it better than his unshaven mommy? But first she sends him to the prison, from which he is to free his brother Hank, because otherwise he will be hanged. When that's done, they both spontaneously decide to rob a bank, which goes completely wrong. Before Doc Snyder's eyes, his beloved brother is shot by his intimate enemy, the Nose Man. Snyder initially manages to escape, but the Nose Man takes up the pursuit, and from then on many innocent people have to die - including Snyder's mother...
Returnee Willy von Mühlenbeck has to realize that his evil brother Martin has risen to become the head of the industrialist family, while their ailing mother is in the hands of sinister doctors. When he falls in love with the terminally ill Els, fate takes a tragic course.