A chance encounter in a flea market parking lot and a severed finger embroil two Vietnamese German siblings and a vividly drawn cast of eccentric neighbors, a tough teen biker with a crush, a rollerblading girl gang, and many others on a mission to save a desperate young Vietnamese woman from her pursuer.

Two German siblings, 12-year-old Tm and 14-year-old Dennis Nguyen, encounter a young Vietnamese woman in trouble in a flea market parking lot. When Tm’s spy movie-obsessed schoolmate, Alex, discovers an abandoned backpack with a photo of a happy couple with Tm’s address on the back, it will lead the two to discover a severed finger. Worried, Tm searches for the desperate woman, aided by her reluctant brother, and eventually finds Hoa Bin, who escaped from her kidnapper who’s still tracking her down. Drawn to Hoa Bin, Tm vows to save her even if she has to break her stern-but-loving mom’s rules, dodge the bad guys in wild chases through the Berlin streets, and combine the forces of Marina, the Nguyens’ tough-chick neighbor, Jutta, an elderly retired actress, a rollerblading girl gang, and many others to do so.

In Ross’s empathetic, loose-but-controlled lines, cartoonishly expressive kids interact against and within the realistically depicted urban environments, given texture and grit by screen-tones. Nirvana Is Here is a contemporary crime thriller that has adventure, diasporic, coming-of-age, and love story elements, set in Berlin’s working-class Lichtenberg district against a backdrop of very current social issues.