Paul Klee and Walter Benjamin described an "angel of history." The heavy gale blowing in from paradise propels this angel into the future. The movie is dedicated to Joris Ivens.
On a West German Autobahn, Robert plummets from a bridge and is hospitalized. As he recovers, he flashes back to a Bulgarian holiday where he met Jutta and her uncle Lothar, who’d ordered a West German passport to smuggle her out of the DDR.
A village has to be destroyed for coal mining. Henning, a 15 years old boy, who wants to visit his grandfather one more time, realizes that nothing will be the way it used to be.
Young people living in Poland in the late 1960s had to face difficult times and make tough choices. Some of them were forced to leave their country for having Jewish origin.
Dim-witted and stuttering Pidol is the brunt of his townsfolk's ridicule. Not even being reconciled to his dad Andres changes his luck, for under Andres' nose Pidol is tormented by his stepmother Husing and stepdaughter Sunshine.