The population of the city of Metropolis lives in a strict two-class society. Above the ground, the life of the rich and privileged takes place. In his "New Tower of Babel," Joh Fredersen pulls all the strings and controls the heart of the system: the underground Moloch of machines and exploited workers. Fredersen's son Freder is the only privileged person to question the prevailing inequality and sets out for the workers' city. There he wants to find the angelic Maria, who gives hope to the workers with sermons of love and classlessness. His own father, however, does everything in his power to stop Maria and the impending uprisings, and commissions the inventor Rotwang to build a machine man who, as a double of Maria, is to plunge the workers into ruin. Fritz Lang's monumental silent classic is considered the prototype of the dystopian science fiction film and is still the model for numerous genre films, both in terms of content and aesthetics.