Germany, spring 1960. The citizens of Tannbach who live on the border between East and West Germany have resigned themselves to a life of political absurdity: a carelessly drawn border has cut the town in two. As the Prague Spring is coming to a bloody end, what little hope was left for the "socialism with a human face" finally seems to evaporate.

While Anna and Friedrich are still working on building socialism in the GDR, Anna's father Georg von Striesow is profiting from the West-German "economic miracle." Yet soon enough, the border in the middle of the village is claiming its first victims: A child dies in a grenade accident, Hilde falls into the clutches of the State Security Service, Anna's son Felix flees from an NPA casern and Georg's soon-to-be third wife Rosemarie has a dark secret...a town on the front line of the Cold War is further torn apart by the Iron Curtain.