Fredy Scheim

Unemployed and homeless actors following the dream of finding the future in South America. The manager Osvaldo Curtis tricks the group of colorful and failed artists to apply for a special visa overseas.

Sermonné par son maître, il comprend enfin que s'il veut échapper à sa condition misérable, il faut qu'il change d'attitude. Il tourne alors le dos à la servante Anneliesi et à ses compagnons de beuverie et se met à travailler dur. Sa réputation s'améliore à tel point que le vieux Joggeli l'engage comme maître-valet dans sa ferme de Giungge.

Pietro Ponz lives a happy life in the mountains on the Swiss-Italian border with his mother Lamberta. No one but his mother knows that Pietro is a girl, a deception that Lamberta was forced into by a series of tragedies almost twenty years previously. Not long after her husband Joseph Ponz died, Lamberta also lost her fragile infant son, Pietro. Whilst mourning this double loss, she began an affair with Bolzano, a notorious smuggler. After Bolzano was killed by the customs men, Lamberta gave birth to his child, a little girl that she decided to pass off as her son Pietro, in the hope of securing an inheritance from her husband's wealthy parents. Now that Pietro is fast coming of age, his tutor and grandmother are adamant that he should be sent to a religious school. Pietro escapes from the school and joins a gang of smugglers...

The sculptor Andreas promised his seriously ill childhood friend before her death that he would take care of her daughter Heidemarie. While his application for custody is going through the authorities, the young girl comes to her uncle and his wife. Both treat Heidemarie badly so she spends most of the time with Andreas and the hunchback beggar boy Peter. Finally, the time has come: Andreas is granted custody and also takes Peter in with him.