Self-important author Leon joins his best friend on a summer holiday near the Baltic Sea to complete his novel. When they arrive, they find their house is already occupied by a carefree woman who challenges Leon to open up. Meanwhile, forest wildfires rage around them and impending disaster looms.

Undine works as a historian lecturing on Berlin’s urban development. When the man she loves leaves her, the ancient myth catches up with her. But falling in love anew, Undine reworks the myth of the mysterious water spirit as a modern fairy-tale in a disenchanted world.

A disfigured concentration-camp survivor, unrecognizable after facial reconstruction surgery, searches ravaged postwar Berlin for the husband who might have betrayed her to the Nazis.