A nursing home wedged in the middle of the mountains in Switzerland, surrounded by a yard as large as a park. This is the only place that Anna, a girl from the street born to a Yenish family, remembers. Agreeable yet sinister at the same time, the place was converted into a silent home for the elderly. Anna is a capable, stern nurse. The only company in her life is Hans, a “Gypsy” like her. Hans works as gardener and digs ceaselessly for Anna, searching for something. The past returns in the form of a sick, kindly old lady, Gertrude. Within the Anna-Gertrude-Hans triangle, the clinic loses its current appearance and returns to what it was: a compulsory shelter for children removed from their families, the temple of a eugenics project led by Gertrude herself. With more strength, Anna resumes her search for what has made her a slave to that place, and to a painful childhood that never ends. The only love in her life, and the primary blame: Fransiska. Her lifelong friend and beloved, she is the one Anna has lost track of, the one she searches for everywhere, ceaselessly.
The only bulwark of Anna’s affection is the old, unmarried Ilse, who, in her absent-minded, tender ways, bears the film’s key message: “how sad it is to die as children.”
Inspired by a true story, by seven hundred true stories.