The Wacholt and Walz families live in an apartment building in the Prenzlauer Berg section of East Berlin, closely abutting the Wall. Each family has a son named Willy. One father dies and the other moves away with his mistress, and the boys listen more to each other than to their mothers. Through long observation, they realize that guards along the Wall are predictable in their actions and unobservant. When they inform a friend, Lutz, about this, he convinces them to jump with him and see a Charles Bronson film.