In Santiago, Chile, the schoolteacher Luisa proposes a debate about sex with the parents of her students with the intention of giving classes about sex education to the youngsters.
Young, inexperienced heroes, the Roma girl Darja and the "white" boy Vítek, nicknamed Ken by his friends, fall in love at a drunken dance with the intensity of their first adolescent love, unaware of the world they live in and how a mere name or skin color can arouse hatred and a desire for revenge in others.
When Isabelle and Theo invite Matthew to stay with them, what begins as a casual friendship ripens into a sensual voyage of discovery and desire in which nothing is off limits and everything is possible.
A 13 year old girl is raped and murdered in a small country town. Ten years later, the murderer is up for parole and the victim's father has vowed personal vengence if the killer is released.
The story begins on New Year's Eve. The editor of the newspaper Orest Orlov offers the successful 35-year-old correspondent Ksenia to take a candid interview with the famous Canadian hockey player Denis Kravtsov.
After the dashing Bavarian Lena Mayerhofer catches her future husband having a fling with her bridesmaid, she flees to Berlin to take over her Aunt Käthe's long-established bakery.