After a series of events, Georg Hauser, an established middle-class man, is at odds with the world, in which he himself used to work so well. He wants out. He wants to live. In a moment of his very own clarity, he destroys his car, but whoever destroys his property is an enemy of the state.

Josef "Schmutz" (german for "dirt"), a security guard obsessed with duty and cleanliness, is given the task of guarding a decommissioned industrial plant. While maintaining his devotion to the authority of property right, the self-proclaimed "Representative of Ownership" is himself slowly losing his sense of reality.