After sleeping with Sharif, an engineer from Kashmir, the young and naive Lisa leaves his apartment without a comment. Six weeks later, they meet again and fall in love. Although Lisa feels totally happy, she doesn't tell Sharif about her pregnancy. On the other hand, he keeps secret that his brother Tajjab came to Munich and forced him to commit a terrorist attack. They both were soldiers of the Muslim liberation army in Kashmir, but Sharif left his home country to study in London. Little by little, Lisa discovers the truth about her boy-friend and tries to prevent the worst...
Volker Schlöndorff transposes Bertolt Brecht’s late-expressionist work to latter-day 1969. Poet and anarchist Baal lives in an attic and reads his poems to cab drivers. At first feted and later rejected by bourgeois society, Baal roams through forests and along motorways, greedy for schnapps, cigarettes, women and men: ‘You have to let out the beast, let him out into the sunlight.’ After impregnating a young actress he soon comes to regard her as a millstone round his neck. He stabs a friend to death and dies alone. ‘You are useless, mangy and wild, you beast, you crawl through the lowest boughs of the tree.’
