Ada (44) is an American investigative journalist of Polish descent. She has just moved from the US to Germany to start a new life with Tommy (38). The couple has met while covering the war in Ukraine and is now expecting their first child. Ada, who’s previously led an intense and adrenaline-fuelled life, finds it hard to adjust. She can’t figure out how to navigate the new reality, and having lost her usual source of empowerment – work – her sense of self feels lost too. The prospect of motherhood, however very much desired, puts an extra pressure on the protagonist.

While the nappies and sleepless nights are still in the future, Ada tries to settle in Hamburg, where she works in the editorial department of a newspaper, writing essays. One day a mysterious package arrives, and weirdly, the addressee is herself. Inside – a book called “Non-Memoir”, shocking recollections of a woman, sexually abused by her father when she was still a child. The book, written under a pseudonym, is dedicated specifically to Ada. With some effort, she manages to trace the author. It is Ada’s childhood friend Roksana (44) from their native Silesian village in Poland.

Roksana asks Ada for a meeting. She wants them to travel together to their hometown, where her mother, the silent witness of her childhood hell, still lives. The woman hopes to confront her and get a confession. She believes Ada will help her get it. The journalist decides to embark on her last investigative journey before the maternal leave and describe the story in a report. However, its subject will be not Roksana, the victim, not the perpetrator father but the silent witness, Karolina (70). Ada’s partner is not overjoyed with the plan, claiming she’s running away from intimacy and commitment. Ada sticks to her guns, which only deepens the divide.

Back in Poland it turns out that Karolina is in full denial, a firm guardian of family secrets perpetrating an image of an ideal husband and a perfect family. The complicated relationship with Roksana and the mother’s shielded, introverted personality makes it difficult for Ada to get the necessary insights. In addition, contemporary traumas open long forgotten wounds and the journalist has to confront her own personal, traumatic memories. Thanks to Roksana she learns that years ago, her own mother, who failed to start anew in the US and returned to Poland leaving Ada behind, drank herself to death. Amongst the darkness and disarray a toxic erotic tension develops between two childhood friends.