A tender, heart breaking story about a young man and his friendship with Sigmund Freud during the Nazi occupation of Vienna. Seventeen-year-old Franz journeys to apprentice at a tobacco shop. There he meets Sigmund Freud (Bruno Ganz), a costumer, and over time the two men form a singular friendship. When Franz falls desperately in love with the music hall dancer Anezka, he seeks advice from the renowned psychoanalyst, who admits that the female sex is as big a mystery to him as it is to Franz.