An impressive, autobiographically tinted epic. A girl, a child of workers, full of curiosity and zest for life, finds herself trapped in the cage of a narrow Catholic village community. She confronts the limits of a world where language and imagination hold no value. She nearly breaks under the harshness and incomprehension of her parents, who want to keep her bound to their own ways of life. In Germany during the fifties and early sixties, the girl seeks her path to freedom: the freedom of the hidden word.