Ilja Zmiejew

For 11-year-old Kattaka it's an escape: she's looking for her biological father, a Russian sailor whose ship is currently moored in Gdansk and whose existence her parents have kept secret until now. For 70-year-old Lena it's a journey back: back to her home in Masuren, from which she fled in the Second World War. And back to her suppressed pain of having lost both parents. Only together can the mismatched couple regain the ground beneath their feet, and themselves.

On September 1st, 1939, Nazi Germany invades Poland, unleashing World War II. On September 17th, the Soviet Red Army crosses the border. The Polish army, unable to fight on two fronts, is defeated. Thousands of Polish men, both military and government officials, are captured by the invaders. Their fate will only be known several years later…

Franz Maurer, a compromised cop, former officer of the criminal department of the Warsaw's police, is released from prison where he was doing time for his brutality and murders. He is awaited by the New, his fellow-policeman. Franz tries to go straight starting hard work in a steel mill. Nevertheless, he must leave the factory as a criminal with an uncertain past when he doesn't join the strike organized by the workers' union. At the same time, a merciless war continues in former Yugoslavia. Wolf and William, two high rank officers, come to Poland in order to organize a network selling and smuggling arms to Yugoslavia by way of Albania.