A young orphaned woman named Kotzebue is trying to find out who her parents are in the icy landscapes of Alaska. Kotzebue is helped by an East German librarian, whose husband was killed while fleeing from the GDR. Although both women could not be more different from each other, a fragile relationship forms.

The incomparable k.d. lang makes her film debut in Percy Adlon’s (Bagdad Cafe, Sugarbaby) exquisitely shot love story about a young, untamed Eskimo woman and her lesbian desire for a German émigeré working as a librarian at an Eskimo trading post in Northwest Alaska. Kabetsu, played by k.d. Lang, who sings the title song “Barefoot”, makes awkward advances to Roswitha (Rosel Zech, who played the title role in Fassbinder’s Veronika Voss). The ensuing relationship begins fraught with sexual tension, but grows into one of nurturing independence and love.