In 1942, Belarus is in the hands of Nazis and the local militia. Sushenya is taken from his house in the middle of the night by Burov and his sidekick Voitik, two partisan fighters hiding out in the hills and forest. Sushenya is the only one of four captured rail workers who has been allowed to live by the occupying Germans after seemingly sabotaging the rail tracks. With the village and even his wife turned against him as a collaborator, Sushenya accepts what must happen next until the Germans suddenly appear and he is - perhaps - given a second chance, leaving space for doubt both on his betrayal and on the legitimacy of punishment by death. The three and later two men walk in the wood, exhausted, fleeing death from the Nazis while discussing and living the moral dilemmas of treason, heroism, guilt and revenge.
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