In a letter left for her friend Tatjana, fugitive Red Army Faction terrorist Rita Vogt Bibiana Beglau recounts the life she has lived as part of a late-20th-century radical movement. Set against the backdrop of 1970s West Germany and the secretive world of the East, the story unfolds through Rita’s cautious, increasingly conflicted choices as she and her comrades push a campaign of armed struggle.
During a visit to Paris, Rita is stopped by a local police officer who asks for her license. When she refuses, she flees and is pursued through a parking ramp, a chase that ends with Rita fatally shooting the officer. The drama intensifies after a prison breakout linked to the murder of a West Berlin corrections officer, sending Rita and her group fleeing to East Berlin. The East German state, bound by its own anti-terror conventions, is reluctant to help, but the Stasi chief Erich Mielke challenges that stance. In a tense exchange with Stasi officer Erwin Hull, he reveals a sympathy for the RAF’s attacks on West Germany and the U.S., comparing his own past acts to theirs and quietly ordering a covert form of assistance.
Hull covertly creates a safe house for the fugitives and trains them in military hardware, a process that unsettles Rita as she watches her companions handling rockets and grenades. Hull proclaims that the RAF’s power lies in bending the law to achieve its ends, and he explains that those willing to retire from armed struggle will be given new identities to begin anew in the GDR. In this moment, the group’s two women, Friederike Adebach Jenny Schily and Rita, accept the offer, much to the shock of the men who remain with the mission. Rita is then prepared for a fresh life, coached on a fictitious “legend” that becomes her new truth, and she is placed in a menial role at a Volkseigener Betrieb clothing factory, presenting herself as a West German who chose to immigrate across the Berlin Wall.
As Rita settles, she is drawn into the East German notion of solidarity—she participates in large cash collections for Nicaragua that are revealed to fund the state rather than humanitarian help. Her coworkers’ disbelief and later ostracism deepen Rita’s sense of isolation. Only her depressed, alcoholic coworker Tatjana forms a connection with her, and their bond grows into a friendship and a relationship that offers Rita a glimpse of ordinary life. A televised RAF report from West Germany interrupts a birthday gathering, signaling that Rita’s past has not vanished; she learns that her former lover has died in an RPG attack, and the West German press continues to paint her as a hunted fugitive. The Stasi relocates her once again, granting only a painful farewell to Tatjana.
Rita’s new life, labeled “Legend Number 2,” places her in a children’s day care center, where she meets Jochen Pettka during a Baltic Sea holiday and falls in love. The romance grows increasingly complicated as Rita’s past becomes harder to hide. When she becomes pregnant, [Hull] urges her to marry Jochen and to travel to the Soviet Union for fear that their union could expose RAF ties. He explains that rising unrest might threaten the GDR and pushes Rita toward an abortion, implying that she would be better off not having the child.
A chance encounter at a choral performance brings Rita face to face with Friederike Adebach again; now a wife with a child, Friederike endures the same quiet resentment toward the regime that marks so many East German lives. Rita’s decision to reveal her past to [Jochen Pettka] opens a rift: Jochen is deeply affected, ends the relationship, and withdraws from the life Rita offered him. By 1989, East Germany collapses under the weight of historical change, and the influx of Western goods proves unsettling and even repugnant to Rita. The Stasi dissolves, its weapons confiscated, and Hull informs Rita that his protection can no longer reach her as the truth of her presence grows clearer.
The news of Friederike’s arrest and extradition to West Germany travels across the country, and Rita goes on the run once more as the Vopos tighten their grip. Tatjana, after years of imprisonment under Hull’s watch, is released and rushes to Rita’s flat, only to be seized by plainclothes officers who ask, “Are you Rita Vogt?” In a bleak, ironical moment, Rita tries to flee toward Poland, racing from a checkpoint as an East German police officer aims an AK-47 at her. She is fatally shot, collapsing on her motorbike as her voiceover returns to the film’s stark truth: > THAT'S EXACTLY HOW IT WAS. MORE OR LESS.
