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Part international spy thriller, part social commentary, this German film is adapted from the best-seller by Johannes Maria Simmel. After the Russian re-occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, large numbers of people flee to German refugee camps. Some of those people are wanted by Soviet intelligence services, others are wanted by Western ones. Many are wanted by both groups. A reporter with a German scandal-sheet decides to pursue the story, but he gets involved with some of the people being pursued (even saving some of their lives), and grows increasingly disgusted with the phony objectivity he is forced into. That "objectivity" would have required him to let all of his subjects be killed.