Wanting to leave Iran with her husband Nader and daughter Termeh, Simin makes all the necessary arrangements. However, her husband Nader refuses to leave behind his father who suffers from Alzheimers.

Based on a true story about Leopold Socha, a sewer worker and petty thief in Lvov, a Nazi occupied city in Poland. One day he encounters a group of Jews trying to escape the liquidation of the ghetto. He hides them for money in the labyrinth of the town's sewers beneath the bustling activity of the city above. What starts out as a straightforward and cynical business arrangement turns into something very unexpected, the unlikely alliance between Socha and the Jews as the enterprise seeps deeper into Socha's conscience. A story of survival as these men, women and children all try to outwit certain death during 14 months of ever increasing and intense danger.

Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik are father and son as well as rival professors in Talmudic Studies. When both men learn that Eliezer will be lauded for his work, their complicated relationship reaches a new peak.