Daniela Baumgärtl

“Whatever falls from heaven, you may keep.” So goes the unwritten law of the Kazakh steppes. A law avidly adhered to by the inhabitants of a small village, who collect the space debris that falls downrange from the nearby Baikonur space station. The last two youthful members of the village are the radio operator Iskander, known as Gagarin, and the spirited Nazira. While Nazira finds it increasing difficult to conceal her love for Iskander by means of her unconventional behaviour, Iskander is evidently not only crazy about Baikonur and the vastness of outer space, but also deeply smitten with the beautiful French astronaut Julie Mahé, whose journey to the stars he wistfully follows on television.

During a storm surge on the North Sea coast in 2007, farm worker Iven takes 3-year old Wienke, the daughter of dike warden Hauke Haien and his wife Elke, to Hamburg and leaves her outside a children’s home. Iven becomes a doorman in St. Pauli. 15 years later, he is visited by a young woman. She wants to know who she is and where she comes from. And she wants him to find her parents. Unwillingly, for he too has a past he would prefer to forget, Iven takes her to the village of Stegebüll on the coast. For the pair, a dramatic journey back in time begins to the fateful events in Stegebüll and the downfall of Hauke Haien and his family.

Kishori, unmarried and mother to a daughter, and her sister Sonal live in a house in Berlin. The house and a cafe on the ground floor are led by Kishori. All of a sudden, her strict and traditional grandmother comes for a visit from India. She wants to sell the house unless Kishori agrees to marry the father of her daughter, Robert. As Kishori feels obliged to all the befriended inhabitants of the house, including Robert, to keep the house, Kishori und Robert prepare to have a traditional Indian wedding.

Things aren’t going well for Esteban. His record shop on the outskirts of San Telmo has gone bust. Esteban has had enough. On the bicentennial of Argentina’s independence he decides to call it day and put an end to the shop – and his marriage to Elisabeth. He wants his freedom – for Esteban has fallen in love again.

The story of Judge Jan-Robert von Renesse, who in the early 2000s fights against his own judicial system for the rights of Holocaust survivors and almost destroys his own life in the process.

Judith works as an emergency doctor in Berlin. When she inherits a house in Austria from the family who gave her away as a child, her quest to solve the mystery of her origins turns into a nightmarish journey into the past and the dark places of her soul.