Amid the turmoil of German reunification, 50-year-old Patty decides to retreat into the forest and builds a life of her own. Decades later, her faint traces surface in the people and landscapes of a changed East Germany.

 Amidst German reunification, 50-year-old Patty loses her job, and the structures of her daily routine dissolve. With increasing stretches of unoccupied time, she walks through her East German town, collecting discarded objects she finds along the way. On one of these walks, she meets the younger Franz, with whom she enters into a casual relationship. As time passes, her friend Jelena leaves the town, and a racist attack occurs in the neighborhood, marking further shifts in her surroundings. One day, upon returning home, Patty finds that the objects she has collected are piled up in front of her door, blocking the entrance. She climbs in through a window, packs a backpack, and leaves for the forest.

There, she establishes a solitary routine shaped by practical tasks and the seasons: planting potatoes, gathering herbs, washing in the river, rebuilding shelter after her tent burns down. Time is marked by simple actions and the surrounding landscape.

Decades later, the film shifts to present-day East Germany where Jelena works on a large historical panorama about the region’s peasant revolt. As daily life in the little town unfolds and brief traces of Patty appear — glimpses that cannot be fully placed. Time moves on, and past and present continue to coexist quietly in objects, gestures, and the spaces people inhabit.

Directed by Eastern German filmmaker Luise Donschen, the film centers on the rarely seen perspective of a middle-aged woman moving through personal and political change. Following Patty across landscapes and decades, it traces how individual lives and wider histories intersect — leaving space for the quiet ways people inhabit time.