Los Angeles, 1959. The aging filmmaker Curtis Melnitz is tormented by nightmares. He is in dire need of sleeping pills – but can only get them if he regularly visits the psychoanalyst. On the analyst’s couch, he reluctantly recounts the story of his life, from Hollywood to Berlin, from the black-and-white, silent dream factory to the garish and glaring German reality of the early 20th century. A chapter for every appointment on the couch. A life like a novel.

Election season in Germany. A right- wing party is challenging the political establishment. What’s needed now are emotional issues, the kind that move people. So it suits everyone rather well when not one but three sperm whales beach themselves on the coast of Rügen. Candidates of every political stripe try to use the story to save democracy, or at least to save themselves. Only Lava Wonder, a trainee marine biologist, genuinely cares about the animals’ welfare, so much so that at first she fails to notice her efforts are being ruthlessly exploited.

Kalmann is a lovable eccentric in the village of Raufarhöfn, high up in the rugged north of Iceland. Ever since his father gave him a sheriff’s hat years ago, he has regarded himself as the village’s sheriff. And in this role, once again, he has a lot on his plate: While the town is heatedly debating the salmon farm that the Norwegians are planning, he discovers an old tin box containing a huge amount of money. It awakens desires, and before long Kalmann is embroiled in a murky game.

When the snow in the Alps melts down into the valley below, the time has come: Mother wakes from her hibernation, her head filled with the dreams of the past months. She is awaited by Grandfather, and cared for by her children, the twins. Soon, the first visitors will arrive, because Mother’s dreams promise advice and give comfort. This is how it is, year after year. But this summer, the twins’ tenth, everything is about to change — and what Mother predicts will come true in an unexpected way.

Is it possible that the Tortoise lives in the same hotel on Lake Garda that the musician Arthur Thalmann hid himself away in? His erstwhile teacher with the missing chin must be almost 90 by now. In truth, the violist has other problems: he fled before an important audition and is supposed to be practising. Instead, he is lying by the pool, strolling through picturesque passageways and becoming increasingly haunted by memories of his school days and the Tortoise’s sadistic methods. And by the guilt that he has burdened himself with.

Joseph is lonely and struggling with his lot in life, not least because his wife Lis, unable to bear day-to-day life on the farm, has fled to the city with their son. This is far from a daily occurrence in the 1960s in the countryside. Luckily, Ada, Lis’ older sister, is still there — with whom Joseph perhaps always felt more connected. And then 19-year-old Birdie suddenly appears on his doorstep, weak, and fleeing her own predetermined path. Lis, Ada and Birdie — they will turn not only their own lives upside down, but Joseph’s too.

At the famous St John’s College in Cambridge, the passionate boxer Hans  is admitted to an elite club. For the first time in a long while, he finds friendship and belonging there. But at what price ? Hans turns a blind eye to lies, even to wrongdoing, until he falls in love with Charlotte and can no longer hide from  the truth.

An allotment garden area in southern Germany, on the edge of a moor. This is where those who can afford nothing better make their home, among them fourteen-year-old Lee and her mother, until the day her mother dies of alcoholism. In the house, Lee finds a bundle of banknotes, enough to get her through for a while. Not even her only friends know what really happened: the perpetually grubby boy next door, Philipp, and seventeen-year-old Nina. Before long the neighbours grow suspicious, asking questions about Lee’s mother and the money. Lee finds herself fighting for her very survival, and for the last scrap of family she has left.

It’s Saturday, it’s summer, it’s Pride ! One  is already primping for the after-party, another still polishing her speech, while someone else is trawling Grindr for company, or lost in memories of past parties and past loves. Vin, Pia, Lou, Marlies, Hanya, Fey, Thorsten, Pantelis, and everyone who knows them. Not one of them suspects that  by Sunday nothing will be quite as it was, and everything that once seemed certain will suddenly be called into question.

One evening the telephone rings. Theo recognises the voice at once: it’s Alissa, his daughter, whom he has neither seen nor spoken to in twenty years. Her disappearance, all those years ago, was the great sorrow of both Theo and his late wife’s lives. Father and daughter begin a cautious rapprochement, a long conversation. Why did Alissa, who now calls herself Jolanda, leave ? Amid sudden intimacy, old wounds and political fault lines, Alissa and Theo try to work out whether, after all this  time, they can still have a place in each other’s lives.

Andersen, once a brutal torturer, is reborn in another century. However, his evil nature has not disappeared; it is now simply trapped in the cute form of an infant – and is therefore all the more terrifying. Andersen is given a new chance with his new life. But he does not use it to atone for his crimes. On the contrary.

Their mother loved Chekhov above all  else, and named them Olga, Masha, Irina and Natasha (after the sisters and sister- in-law of Chekhov’s play Three Sisters). Now the sisters gather on Ibiza to decide what should become of the house among the orange trees where their parents lived out their hippie lives to the very end. Should they keep it, memories and all ?  Or sell it, precisely because of them ?  Doris Dörrie tells of a happiness as  fleeting as champagne bubbles, a tribute, warm and full of humour, to her favourite writer, Anton Chekhov.

A young woman called Lina Verde is searching the craggy, steep cliffs of Capri for a rare orchid. Soon afterwards, Zeno the fisherman finds her lifeless body. He claims that he and Lina were a couple, but he doesn’t even know her address. Did he kill her? Zeno is a notorious liar who presents himself as a sociable Capri fisherman, at least to female tourists. The island police officers Enrico Rizzi and Antonia Cirillo believe him to be capable of anything, but a perfumer leads them onto a new trail. Was Lina really just looking for a flower?

Berlin, 1943: At Plötzensee, 20-year-old Liane Berkovitz is executed by the Nazis. Young love and her contempt for the Nazi dictatorship have made her into a resistance fighter with the Schulze-Boysen group. Decades later, an elderly woman is walking along the streets of Berlin; unkempt, with long, snow-white hair. Everyone who lives there has seen her, but barely anyone knows who she really is: a millionaire, and the first-hand witness of Liane’s momentous life.