In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden

In a Year of 13 Moons

Frankfurt am Main, summer 1978: Elvira Weishaupt (Volker Spengler), who became a woman a few years ago following a sex change operation, recapitulates her life, the childhood of the boy Erwin in the convent, her work as a butcher, her marriage to Irene (Elisabeth Trissenaar), the daughter of the master butcher, and the operation in Casablanca. Stages of a life in search of love. The present is no less bleak: mostly accompanied by the "Red Zora" (Ingrid Caven), a not unfriendly hooker, Elvira, abandoned by her boyfriend Christoph Hacker (Karl Scheydt), wanders through a nightmarish Frankfurt, through gambling salons and high-rise buildings, and is rejected by the speculator Anton Saitz (Gottfried John), for whose sake Elvira once had an operation. When other people in the immediate vicinity, the wife, the daughter (Eva Mattes), a journalist (Gerhard Zwerenz), also fail to recognize Elvira's desperation, Elvira dies “of a broken heart” (Fassbinder).