In this filmed version of the original musical, Leiden student Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema and his friends see their carefree student life disrupted when the Germans invade the Netherlands in 1940. The boys, then around 23 years old, realize out of the blue that nothing is the same anymore. Friendship and love are no longer self-evident. The war turns everything upside down, all relationships are on edge. Everyone has to make their own choices…: Are you going to fight for Freedom, People, Fatherland? Do you bury your head in the sand and continue studying? Or do you deliberately choose the enemy?

Photographer Bob loses his girlfriend. A year later he meets Kathleen. Is she in love? Or does she use him for her dark dealings with the mafia?

While escaping from Nazis during the WWII, a Jewish man dug suitcases full of things dear to his heart in the ground two. The war deprived him of his family, and afterwards he endlessly turns over the soil of Antwerp to find the suitcases, which makes him look obsessed. He keeps checking old maps and keeps digging, trying to find, in fact, those he lost. His daughter Chaya is a beautiful modern girl looking for a part-time job. She finds a place as a nanny in the strictly observant Chassidic family with many children, although her secular manners clearly fly in the face of many commandments. One of the reasons she is accepted is that mother of the family is absolutely overburdened by the household, so she stays despite the resistance of the father, normally - an indisputable authority in the family. She develops a special bond with the youngest of the boys, four-year old Simcha, so far incapable of speaking.