Sabine Kleist, 7 Jahre... (1982)

In a car accident, the girl Sabine Kleist loses her parents. She is sent to a children's home, where the caregiver Edith becomes the most important person in her life. When Edith gives up her job because she is pregnant, Sabine reacts with distress and defiance, striking at Edith's belly. Shortly after Edith leaves, the seven-year-old runs away from the home. Sabine wanders through Berlin. She rides circus horses through the city at night and spends her first night with Circus Aeros, joins a funeral party, and visits a maternity ward, always hoping to find Edith. She also goes to Edith's home, but Edith isn't there. A young member of the FDJ gives Sabine 50 pfennigs, which she uses to buy cookies. A short time later, she meets a Polish boy, Stanislav, who has lost his mother in the crowd and is crying. Delighted to have a new playmate, Sabine cheers him up and gives him her cookies. She splashes around in a Berlin fountain and visits a church with him. Later, however, she takes him to the police, where she is promptly recognized too. Before anyone can catch her, Sabine has disappeared again. A large-scale search for her begins. She spends the late afternoon in a new housing development, where she encounters the drunk Karl Schindler. Teenagers mock him for his stumbling walk, but Sabine helps him. He has just come from a work celebration where he was sent off into retirement, and he is grateful to the girl for helping him find his house number. Realizing that she is in trouble, he lets her spend the night at his apartment. The next morning, they have breakfast together, and Sabine tells him she has run away from the home. She offers to stay with him, but he only wants to visit her at the home from time to time. That isn't enough for her. When Karl phones the home and accepts a job as a caretaker there, he wants to tell the girl the good news right away, but Sabine has already run away again. By now, the whole city is searching for her. The heavily pregnant Edith also blames herself and searches the city for Sabine with her husband. Meanwhile, Sabine takes part in a boat trip organized by a company for the children of its single mothers, and spends the afternoon playing ball on the beach with a family. Each time, however, she has to realize that she doesn't belong and that everyone only lets her join in because they assume Sabine has a family of her own. Sabine spends the next night in an empty house. The following day, it is demolished before her eyes. She then goes to a police car and willingly lets herself be taken back to the home. The new caregiver is already waiting for her, and Edith is there too. Sabine pretends she only came to visit. She cautiously touches Edith's belly and, shortly afterward, skips back to the home alongside the new caregiver.