Karl Kraemer and his wife Maria, a formally well known singer who suddenly has lost her voice, are visited by their grown up children and at this family gathering they have to face unresolved conflicts of the past.
Karl Krämer is a middle class retired person who has been living with his wife Maria in the countryside of northern Germany for many years. Maria formally was a well-known singer, who, in the peak of her career, fell seriously ill and then unluckily lost her voice. From this moment she has been in a desolate state unable to communicate and forced to battle her inner demons... But for her husband she has remained the glamorous person of former times. He denies to realise the fact, that the success of his wife and the love of their partnership has vanished by the time. Besides life has changed to increasing isolation... Together, Karl and Maria have three grown up children, who are quite different in their character and their way of living. Each of them try to get over their difficult childhood in their own way and through the course of the years they have grown distant to their parents and perhaps to each other. Yet, on the 65th birthday of their father, they all come back to visit him unexpectedly. This family gathering is of course supposed to be a simple birthday reunion, but then it transforms into a series of disturbing, poignant and sometimes comic-like events. The emerging problems of this situation expose the family drowning into unresolved conflicts of the past. Each family member tries to find a solution in different interactions - with a deep desire to heal each other. How can they find the way back to sanity when the own point of view differs from each other in so many aspects...?
