Franz [Adrian Topol] remains in a Belarusian village and falls in love with Polina [Svetlana Ivanova]. The mood is tense beneath a quiet surface, as the Nazis pose as friendly sympathizers to win the villagers’ trust while secretly planning to burn the villages and slaughter the inhabitants. The tension between fear and affection grows as the couple’s bond deepens, even as the specter of violence hangs over every night and every whispered conversation.
When Polina’s partisan brother returns, he urges that Franz be kept out of sight, and Polina passes Franz off as her deaf-mute brother to protect him. The ruse buys them a fragile moment of safety, and they briefly settle in a log cabin in the woods, where Polina becomes pregnant. The quiet of their private refuge is brief, and the couple finds themselves constantly on the run, hunted by collaborators who know they carry a dangerous secret.
As danger closes in, Polina is shot by a collaborator, and Franz miraculously saves her, pulling her into a larger group of refugees. To survive, Franz kills a German soldier for his uniform and infiltrates a nearby village to obtain an antibiotic needed to treat Polina’s wound. He returns not only with medicine but also with a feverish delirium, the typhoid fever taking hold, and his German accent slips in a moment of exhaustion, revealing his true national identity.
The refugees show sympathy, but one small boy — the sole survivor of a family lured back by what seemed like humane Waffen-SS behavior — keeps a gun and becomes a volatile threat. The boy’s adoptive mother and sister cannot persuade him to stand down, and he forcedly points the weapon at Franz. Polina and Franz are forced to flee once more, their tenuous safety giving way to a renewed chase.
Their escape is interrupted by a German patrol, which is then ambushed by partisans in a sudden gust of violence and courage. After the clash, Franz crouches by the river, drawing water for the pregnant Polina, while the tense moment is interrupted by the appearance of the boy, gun in hand. The film closes on a stark, uncomfortable note: the boy returns with the water and comforts a crying Polina, leaving the audience with a haunting image of what survival costs in this brutal landscape.
