DESCRIPTION

Berlin electro composer Martin Karow (Paul Kalkbrenner), a.k.a. DJ Ickarus, is touring the world's most with-it dance clubs with his girlfriend and manager Mathilde (Rita Lengyel), hopping from one airport to the next, from one gig to another. They share bed, music studio and office in their Berlin apartment. Mathilde is increasingly critical of Ickarus because of his excessive drug consumption, but their love and their mutual goal of bringing out a new album create a powerful bond between them. After one of his gigs, however, Ickarus loses control and ends up in the emergency drug ward of a Berlin psychiatric clinic.

Head physician Prof. Dr. Petra Paul (Corinna Harfouch) diagnoses drug-induced mental confusion. They have to wait for the lab results to find out what kind of pill Ickarus took. Although he's more freaked out than he wants to admit, he still doesn't take his condition particularly
seriously. Mathilde brings him his computer and he continues to work on the pieces for his new album in the clinic. He also begins to take part in the social life of the "open" drug ward. He becomes
friends with his fellow patients Crystal Pete (Peter Schneider), Franz (Andre Hoffmann), Michi (Paul Preuss), Jamal (Mehdi Nebbou) and Goa Gebhard (Caspar Body), as well as with Alex (Max Mauff), who is doing his civil service there. At night Ickarus is plagued by panic-like flashbacks. Dr. Paul advises him to take a creative break under her supervision, and reminds him that he is in the clinic of his own free will.

After Alice (Megan Gay), the boss of the record label Vinyl Distortion, tells Mathilde that she won't be releasing the new album, and club boss Tom (Dirk Borchardt) postpones the record release party. Ickarus, who is getting increasingly frustrated with his situation in the drug ward, sneaks out of the clinic, gets cocaine from his trusted dealer Erbse (RP Kahl) and spends the weekend partying with groupie Jenny (Henriette Müller). Mathilde starts losing interest in helping Ickarus get clean.
She finds a shoulder and more to cry on in her ex-girlfriend Corinna (Araba Walton), who works as a bouncer at a techno club. Ickarus is less bothered by Mathilde's relationship with Corinna than by her preaching. When they end up forming a ménage à trois, things start to fall in place once again.

But then Ickarus finds out that the album has been canceled. He loses his bearings again and, in a cocaine-induced delirium, strikes Mathilde and demolishes the office of record-label boss Alice. He then runs back to the drug clinic, where another power struggle awaits him, this time with Dr. Paul. Ickarus tries to control the damage, but it's too late. Alice kicks him out of her agency, Mathilde moves in with Corinna and refuses to see Ickarus anymore, and Dr. Paul's therapy fizzles out and
ends in a fiasco. Just before leaving the clinic, Ickarus organizes a madcap going-away party, and the clinic patients have a merry old time until the caretakers arrive and put an end to the high jinx...

Ickarus is put under sedation and isolated in a closed ward. Dr. Paul justifies this step to Mathilde by claiming that he is a danger to himself and others. In spite of their separation, Mathilde fights to have
him released, and even asks Ickarus' father (Udo Kroschwald), a Protestant pastor, for help. In the closed ward, Ickarus writes more music for his album. For a moment, the sun appears on the horizon again. But is everything really going to change for the better?