When the 22-year-old Phillippe Halsman, from Zillertal, returns from the mountains without his father, he is charged with his murder. Halsman is Jewish, and in a time of increasing anti-semitism, many immediately presume his guilt. His situation seems almost hopeless when the lawyer Richard Pressburger, who is also Jewish, takes up his defence. With a large contingent of prominent people speaking for him, including Thomas Mann and Sigmund Freud, and as the world's press watches with baited breath, he fights for the release of his client, who would later go on to find worldwide fame as a photographer to the stars.