Cologne cab driver Tarek Fahd is reading the newspaper when a strange item catches his eye, an ad offering 4000 marks each to volunteers for a psychological experiment. One night, just before Tarek begins the experiment -- which involves living in a mock prison for two weeks -- his taxi is hit by another car driven by a beautiful young woman named Dora. Dora is distraught, having just lost her father, and Tarek comforts her in his bed. The next morning Dora is gone, vanished without a trace, but Tarek can′t forget her and he takes his memories of her with him when he starts his term in a prison that has been constructed in a university basement. At the start, everyone, guards and prisoners alike, take it as a game. But when Tarek begins to provoke the guards, the situation begins to get out of hand.