When Michael, a successful theatre director learns that he suffers from an incurable disease, he resigns and goes to an abandoned cottage to write his memoirs. His life companion and a nurse stay by his side. They have a hard time trying to make the last days bearable of a man who seems to give up his life too easily. Until a charismatic young man shows up.
The psyche of a ruthless secret agent in Cold War Czechoslovakia begins to unravel when he obsesses over the girlfriend of a suspected subversive he is tracking. This taut political thriller is a bleak and potent rendering of the emotional destruction wreaked by totalitarianism.