Nearly half of Germany's former prisoners reoffend within their first year out, and this DW film follows two men trying to beat those odds. Alex, 31, from Berlin, served eight years for petrol station robberies after a teenage slide into moped theft and drug dealing; he's now training as a violence-prevention counselor, in a relationship, and a new father, but admits he has to decide every day not to be a criminal. René, 43, from Leipzig, has spent sixteen years total in prison across nine sentences for theft, robbery, and assault; released on condition he enters long-term therapy, he struggles to find an apartment while battling drug addiction, with his fifteen-year-old daughter Kilischa now living with him and offering support. The cameras follow both men through parole appointments, therapy sessions, and housing searches, letting their own words carry the uncertainty about whether either will make it. Neither outcome is settled by the film's end; both futures stay genuinely open.