A small town in the 1970s in southern Germany. Michaela, 21, has grown up in a deeply religious family, with a kind but weak father and a cold-hearted, distant mother. Despite her years-long battle with epilepsy, Michaela burns to leave home and study at the university. There, her first taste of freedom, her budding love for Stefan and her friendship with Hanna crack open the shell of faith and family within which she had always felt secure and protected. The result is a breakdown. Not a normal epileptic attack, but a frightening onrush of grotesque faces and voices. Afraid of being sent back home to her family, Michaela seeks help from a priest who reinforces her conviction that she is possessed. Though Stefan and Hanna entreat her to seek psychiatric help, they are unable to break through the dense religious and moral ties binding Michaela to her family, and leave her to her fate…