Produced immediately after the Oberhausen Manifesto, Yesterday Girl is a bit of an experimental film, a youth-oriented and darkly satirical look at one young woman, Anita G. (Alexandra Kluge, the filmmaker's sister and frequent collaborator), who is trying to break free from the dark shadows of her parents generation by moving from East Germany to West Germany.

This ill-fated move quickly leads to her arrest for the theft of a sweater, her subsequent incarceration and her struggles to remove yesterday from the today of her existence.