Vienna, Austria, 1912. The brilliant painter Oskar Kokoschka, considered one of the main representatives of the expressionist movement, has a tumultuous relationship, both professional and romantic, with the composer Alma Mahler.
When the heart-sick bus driver August is forced into involuntary retirement, he decides to gamble away his severance pay at the casino. But he wins: a million euros! Looking for a person who truly loves him, August places an advertisement in the newspaper: Millionaire is looking for a loving wife who will give him an heir! The pretty Sonja answers. She is supposed to give August a child, in exchange for the child inheriting the assets. What Sonja August is keeping quiet about: She is already pregnant and in acute financial trouble. But August's relatives also sense their chance at the million.
Jan, a freelance journalist, and Sabine, the mother of his two children and a textile designer, have no money. Sabine is abandoned by her husband and then gets caught up in the bureaucracy. A sober psychogram of a woman who is fighting and hoping for her life and everyday life.
Prague 1994, hotbed of international profiteers. Here you can still find buyers for discarded everyday objects, here you can still buy cheap houses - provided you can find a Czech straw man. Joint venture, a rogue comedy in which everyone believes they are smarter than the other and everyone hopes to win their dirty game at the other's expense.
Alex (Thierry Van Werveke), a pest exterminator who lives with his grandmother, picks up a stranded woman (Kate Valk) who claims to be the American daughter of a spy.
Karl Hirnschall is in his thirties and is a member of a Viennese avant-garde theatre group in the early seventies. When he is finally fed up with acting for low fees, he goes back to his former life. He becomes the "right man" for a grocery firm whose products he sells with great success. The neo-salesman manages to acquire a furnished appartment for himself and his young girlfriend, Traude. When his income does not keep pace with his expenditures, Karl resorts to shady business deals.
A man sentenced to death escapes from a military prison and finds shelter with a resistance group that is set to liberate the country. The repressive enemy never sleeps. The escaping condemned man is also no longer the old warrior he once was: he is broken - wonders whether the resistance can put him back together.