No crisis is as disastrous, overwhelming and unfair as Alfi Seliger's. The Jewish filmmaker, hypochondriac and family man has a whole slew of troubles: his pubescent children, Romy and Alain, think he's a ridiculous loser, while his wife, Helena, thinks they're being generous. Not only that, his bank is going under and his new film project is being panned. Alfi is getting deeper and deeper into a web of intrigue and conspiracy. Natasha, the gambling-addict wife of a big producer, is after him, and so is onetime German world star Georg Maria Stahl. Friends are turning into enemies, hope into paranoia, and when even his psychiatrist advises him to end his miserable life, Alfi tries to kill himself, in a very theatrical gesture.