This feature length documentary presents a WWII story of Jewish artists who struggle with the wartime reality by the only means available to them: music, theater and film. They defend themselves from the Nazi repression with humor, cabaret, shows, skits, performances, songs, and concerts organized in concentration camps and ghettos all around Europe. They fight for their lives, but most importantly - as they highlight - they fight for their souls and for their dignity. In a series of staged episodes, being true reconstructions of facts, the film shows how music and sketches become weapons in the battle for life. The subtleties of humor and mockery functioned as a hidden code, which was comprehensible for the victims and illegible for guards and executioners. "I was playing for my life" – says one of the film’s protagonists, summarizing in this sentence the essence of what he was doing in front of a commandant of the concentration camp. "I played for those who were shooting and for those who were shot". A street clown Rubinstein, the legendary figure of the Warsaw Ghetto, is a symbolic guide through the world of comedians, actors, musicians, and filmmakers; the world full of paradoxes and improbable events. The film goes to the Warsaw Ghetto, the camps in Kurowice, Jaktorow, Buchenwald, Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Ravensbruck . The events are commented by the last living participants and witnesses as well as by contemporary artists and writers, exploring "art beyond barbed wire."

Andrzej Celiński stage director, actor, scriptwriter, graduate of the State Theatrical Academy. His films were shown at major film festivals, receiving numerous awards worldwide. He was nominated for the 77th Academy Award® for one of his documentary film ‘The Children of Leningradsky’.
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