In October 1953, five friends decide to leave communist Czechoslovakia and get to West Berlin. They manage to cross the guarded border but are soon detected in East German territory. Unknowingly, they initiate the largest armed manoeuvre since WW2; twenty thousand German Police and Soviet Army members are mobilised, all because of five teenage boys. After an extensive hunt, two members of the group are caught and, after extradition to Czechoslovakia, executed. In the following week, with no shelter, food, or rest, the remaining three, the Mašín brothers and their injured friend Milan Paumer, finally make it to West Berlin. They save themselves but the regime will have its vengeance on their families.