Outline:

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1964. A Volga car cruises into an airport, distantly we can see the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, and the Berlin Wall between them. A family of three, a father, mother and son move through the bagging area. They’re constantly checking each other are making it through each layer of security. 

All is going accordingly, until the mother taps the father’s wrist – Soviet soldiers have taken a family into a private room.

 

They move fast towards the papers station, beyond it, through an observational window a plane marked with a French flag boards for take-off. They send the child through to the passport guard first in the hopes of their escape.

 

Meanwhile, in an office not far from them a Soviet Officer salutes his superior who expresses his pride in the Officer’s loyalty to the Communist doctrine and relentlessness in hunting defectors. During this the Soviet Officer watches the family carefully, spying their anxiety – their hasty rush to get their child through first. He doesn’t point them out to his superior who swiftly leaves.

Before they can check through the Officer takes the son by the arm – the mother races to defend her son but is held back by other soldiers. The Officer notices the boarding passes, their family name is ‘Barinov’. The son is taken into the office for questioning, while the family are kept waiting at passport control. All the while the family’s plane is being boarded and prepped for take-off. Escape is a stone’s throw away.

 

The Soviet Officer introduces himself as a Barinov, ‘what a coincidence’, conversing with the son playfully and drawing on the boy’s interest of planes. From there he begins to ask about where they’re going, to which we discover the family are going on a vacation in the French mountains. However, with the child trust secure and playing his cards right he discovers their final destination is Britain.

 

The child cries after giving his family away. The Officer jumps in to calm him down seemingly from the goodness of his heart. He sends the child through onto the runway to wait for his parents.

The Officer commands a guard to drag the Mother into a side room, pressuring the father seeing his family split. He’s taken into his office; next in line for the Officer’s interrogation.

He taunts the father that his son gave them all up, crushing the father’s spirit. The Father begs for his family’s safety, eventually realising what the Officer wants, West German money. The father starts by giving the Officer 100,000 marks, but the demand keeps raising, until the Officer has virtually bankrupted the family at 1,500,000 marks. Now satisfied he sends the father through to the plane, a bankrupted man. As the mother is brought towards to runway, she is halted and kept behind. The father and son can only watch, the deal has been broken, heading back would-be suicide. They try to delay the plane.

 

The Officer calls his superior down to see the defector he has caught. The Mother, with hope lost and nothing left to lose, offers her body but is turned down and shunned by the Officer; she has found the line he won’t cross.

 

At this point she breaks down his moral hypocrisy that aims to self-fulfil but not help others, but the clock is ticking – his superior could arrive at any moment. They argue; she takes the stance showing how he and his nation, through selfishly driven human nature, have betrayed the fundamentals of their own ideology, Communism, showing that supportive family groups are where the soul of his deeply rooted beliefs lie.

 

The Officer appears unsure, however, with the father and son desperately trying to slow the plane down despite the approach of Soviet guards, he suddenly lets the Mother go. As they’re boarding the plane, the superior officer enters questioning why he was called in. We don’t see the Officers’ response, just the family flying over the border, off to the West.