Nemec's opening shots set the tone for the film: a racing camera tracks the hunted, leaving us breathless and keeping us in a state of constant apprehension. We are immersed in a life-and-death struggle, a relentless nightmare of fear and oppression that is emotionally and physically draining, as we follow the ordeal of two Jewish boys who escape from a German death train during the war and spend four days in the forest. The psychology of the hunted takes precedence over incident; what is real and what is imagined are intertwined, thanks to Kucera's brilliant cinematography. The screenplay is written by Arnost Lustig from his own story, "and it is easy to see his kinship with Kafka, the great poet of everyday nightmares....The night is obviously the darkness of wartime, the age of persecution, flight and man-hunting, but these kinds of dies irae always arouse the dark part of the mind, awaken its blackness and its rare diamonds....Nemec speaks about the nature of anxiety when power is armed against the individual." (Yvette Biro)