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Filmed over eight years, Grains of Sand accompanies the filmmakers mother and mother-in-law, artists and close friends, as they enter their ninth decade. Through conversation, memories and artwork, along with reflections by the filmmaker herself, they create together this positive, different kind of coming-of-age story.

Margot and Barbara, close friends and artists, and the directors mother & mother-in-law, meet for a work retreat in a stone farmhouse in the German countryside. They are both on the cusp of their ninth decade. As they begin to work on the large stones they have brought to sculpt, they embark on a conversation about creativity and aging, exploring what it means for them to arrive at this stage of their lives. Their wrinkled hands become dusty as they scrape and chisel the stones.

Margot was born in England and now lives in San Francisco with her husband of over 60 years. In her studio she reflects on the struggle it took for her to maintain her painting practice as she navigated expectations as a wife and mother. She visits the gravesite she and her husband have chosen outside the city. On green sloping hills of the burial grounds, Margot imagines how it will be to live alone if Peter dies first.

In her studio in Hamburg, mother-in-law Barbara explains how after her divorce she didnt have much money. She found a way to support herself with a part time job so that she would have time to paint every day. She hopes she can continue painting until her very last gasp. Barbara shares an apartment with her second husband, and observes how their relationship is changing now that they are approaching 80.