Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

American tourist Frank meets mysterious British woman Elsie on the train to Venice. Romance seems to bud, but there's more to her than meets the eye.

German artist Kurt Barnert has escaped East Germany and now lives in West Germany, but is tormented by his childhood under the Nazis and the GDR regime.

In 1984 East Berlin, an agent of the secret police, conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover, finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives.