In 1984 East Berlin, dedicated Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler begins spying on a famous playwright and his actress-lover Christa-Maria. Wiesler becomes unexpectedly sympathetic to the couple, and faces conflicting loyalties when his superior takes a liking to Christa-Maria.
Raised by her father, an ex-CIA agent, in the wilds of Finland, Hanna's upbringing has been geared to making her the perfect assassin. Sent into the world by her father on a mission, Hanna journeys across Europe, eluding agents dispatched after her by a ruthless intelligence operative. As she nears her ultimate target, Hanna faces startling revelations about her existence.
The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.
