In Christian Petzold's brilliant and haunting modern-day adaptation of Anna Seghers's 1942 novel, Georg, a German refugee, flees to Marseille assuming the identity of a recently deceased writer whose papers he is carrying. There he delves into the delicate and complex culture of the refugee community, becoming enmeshed in the lives of a young mother and son and falling for a mysterious woman named Marie.

Set in Germany and France in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, (1914-1918), the film recalls the mourning period that follows great national tragedies as seen through the eyes of the war's 'lost generation': Anna, a bereft young German woman whose fiancé, Frantz, was killed during trench warfare, and Adrien, a French veteran of the war who shows up mysteriously in her town, placing flowers on Frantz's grave.