Vienna, 1938: Kristallnacht has ended and elderly Jewish women are sweeping up the broken glass. From this first scene forward, Axel Corti sets the tone for his sweeping trilogy-films about not the high drama of a cruel time, but how that cruelty weighs upon the everyday. After finding his home looted, Ferry Tobler (Johannes Silberschneider), son of a murdered tailor, flees Austria along with other sudden refugees risking the journey to Prague. Along the way, he joins up with several desperate travelers: “Gandhi” (Armin Mueller-Stahl), an anti-Nazi resistor who has fled Dachau, and Alena (Barbara Petritsch), a refugee committee worker. Using beautifully composed black-and-white cinematography matched impeccably to period newsreels, Corti's first installment exudes the emotional resonance of people running from the harsh jackboot of history.