Susanne, a single mother, is a factory worker who is raising her daughter Jenny. Exhausted from the burden of life, she quits the factory and sets off in search of a better job. When it becomes difficult to even pay her daughter's medical bills, however, Susanne takes the advice of her friend and pretends to have lost her bicycle in order to claim the insurance money. She happens to meet Thomas with whom she gets closer to but finds herself in trouble when it is found out that she wrongfully claimed the insurance money.  This film portrays the reality of East German society which aspires to a society without discrimination of class or gender and presents the difference in the daily lives of male workers who hold major positions and female workers struggling to make ends meet by performing simple labor. Furthermore, what Schmidt does is to gaze with compassion at the irresponsible Susanne who prefers to drink and party all night with her friends than work. 

Evelyn Schmidt (1949~) Born in Görlitz, Germany 
Evelyn Schmidt who worked at the DEFA Studio in its last days majored in directing at the Film and Television Academy in Potsdam-Babelsberg (Hochschule fuer Film und Fernsehen in Babelsberg). She received the Silver Laurel of the GDR for Lasset die Kindlein...., which was commissioned by a TV broadcaster in 1976 and then worked at the DEFA Studio. Her first feature Fling was received favorably at the 1980 Berlin Film Festival and then she made her second film The Bicycle about the dark side of East Germany, which was shunned by critics and banned from being submitted to international film festivals. She achieved commercial success with Felix and the Wolf in 1988 but the dissolution of DEFA Studio made it more and more difficult for her to make films and she went on to work in theater and schools.