Using her skills of selling Internet and insurance deals, young call center employee Alice calls up elderly strangers and pretends to be their granddaughter in urgent need of money. As this trick quickly makes her rich, the film observes people and places in Zurich, all mysteriously connected to Alice’s business.
In 1877, in a watch factory in a valley in north-western Switzerland, Josephine produces balance spindles, tiny parts that ensure the agitation movement ("unrueh") of the mechanical watches. She soon grows uneasy with the organisation of work and possession in the village and its factory and joins the anarchist worker movement of the local watchmakers. There she meets Piotr Kropotkin, a moony Russian traveller. The two of them meet at a time when new technologies such as time measurement, photography and the telegraph are transforming the social order and anarchist discourse is addressing emerging nationalism. During a walk in the woods, Josephine and Piotr ask themselves whether time, money and the government are not all but fictions.
As snow falls over a city, people share secret tricks with each other. Like how to kiss somebody and make them disappear, or having thoughts which are unrecognizable to machines.
