The life story of East Berlin transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, winner of the International Film Crittics Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival. Charlotte, born Lothar Berfelde in 1928, lives life as a woman, although enclosed in the body of a man. Brought up by a tyrannical father in Nazi Germany who beat Charlotte regularly to make her into a proper soldier, she had only the support of a transvestite lesbian aunt who let her wear girl's clothes and help with domestic chores. After endless torture and humiliations wrought upon her by her father, Charlotte finally killed her tormentor in his sleep. Surviving the war, she opened a private museum housing turn-of-the-century pieces and received the highest decoration granted by the Federal Republic, the Federal Order of Merit in 1992.