Margarethe, a German artist in her fifties, returns to her hometown Leipzig for a retrospective of her work. Rediscovering her paintings takes her back to her student days as an anti RDA protester in love with Heinrich, a mysterious young punk singer. Through the fog of repressed memories, the growing doubt - did she ever really know who he was ?

1890, Panama. Yellow fever infects workers who kill each other. Mosquitoes are a scourge. The adventure of the construction of the Panama Canal is a shipwreck... In the midst of this debacle, Abel, a young French engineer and his wife Josephine are expecting a child.