Marie Vlácilová (Jirina Sejbalová) is fifty-six years old. She lost her husband in the Second World War, herself having spent several years in the concentration camp, and her only child, little Pavla, was placed in a German family for re-education. After the war, Pavla (Karla Chadimová) is found and returned to the native mother but is not able to have a warm relation to her any more. When she is seventeen, she leaves for Berlin on an excursion organized by the youth movement and does not return. Since then, Vlácilová has lived alone. One day, she is asked by the Czechoslovak authorities to go to Germany to give testimony in the trial of a war criminal. - IMDb