Lola (Franka Potente) answers a red phone the same color as her punk rock hair. It’s her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtru), a small time courier for a big time gangster. He is at a pay phone with a big problem. His boss is coming to pick up 100,000 Deutsche Marks in twenty minutes, and Manni doesn’t have it. Due to an unfortunate series of events, he left it in a bag on a train. While the homeless man who grabbed the money is about to have a really good day, Lola is determined to figure a way out of this for Manni, so it’s not his last.
With Manni’s life on the line, Lola takes off running through the streets of Berlin to reach him and somehow pick up 100,000 marks along the way, making split-second decisions and encountering acquaintances, family, and strangers. She runs down sidewalks, into offices, through traffic and back again. As the clock ticks down, the tiniest choices become life altering (or life-ending) decisions, and the fine line between fate and fortune begins to blur.
Told in three variations with three endings, Run Lola Run is a fast-paced, kinetic exploration of destiny, set to a pumping dance music soundtrack and interspersed with animated interludes, flashbacks, and flashforwards that remind us of life's limitless possibilities.