East Germany in 1980: Barbara (Nina Hoss) is a physician who arrives for her first day at a small rural hospital near the Baltic Sea. She had been at the prestigious Charité hospital in East Berlin but, after she'd filed an "Ausreiseantrag" – an official request to leave East Germany – she had been incarcerated and transferred to the small town where she is still monitored by the Stasi. She is punished - for the hours in which they cannot find her - by searching her house, strip-searching and cavity-searching her.