A double portrait of two dictators who were thousands of miles apart but were constantly fixated on each other.

It was one of the great crimes of the Second World War: from 1941 to 1944, a total of 872 days, the siege and starvation of Leningrad by the German Wehrmacht on Hitler's orders lasted. Over a million people fell victim to the blockade, most of them dying of hunger. Countless of these starving people wrote diaries with the last of their strength, and cameramen filmed in the paralyzed city. Evidence from the hell of the siege, many of the film recordings, but above all the written memories on which this documentary on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation is based, remained under lock and key after the war. The voices of those who had suffered through this terrible time should not be heard by anyone, because they did not fit the pathos of the Leningrad heroic song that was officially sung. Most of the recordings come from women. The writers feared neither the enemy nor the Communist Party or Stalin, who often proved incompetent in providing for the population.

August 1942: Amidst the unimaginable suffering inflicted during the blockade of Leningrad by the German Wehrmacht, an orchestra director was given an almost impossible task: to stage the premiere of Dimitri Shostakovitch's "Leningrad Symphony". The performance became a symbol of the brief triumph of culture over the barbarism of war.

Amateur actors read stories from a book describing the 900-day siege of Leningrad during World War II.

The documentary focuses on the struggles of those who survived the long siege by German forces during World War II (from 8 September 1941 to 27 January 1944). The three million inhabitants of Leningrad (now renamed St Petersburg) suffered extremes of starvation and deprivation.