A small band of convicts stage a daring escape from a WWII-era Siberian gulag, and embark on a journey across five countries in a race for freedom and survival.

In 1940, three men attempt to flee communist Russia, escaping a Siberian gulag. This movie tells their story and that of four others who escaped with them and a teenage girl, Irena Zielinska, who joins them in flight. The group's natural leader is Janusz Weiszczek, a Pole condemned by accusations secured by torturing his wife, spent much of his youth outdoors, and knows how to live in the wild.

They escape under cover of a snowstorm: cynical American Mr. Smith, Russian thug Valka, comedic accountant Zoran, pastry chef Tomasz Horodinsky, who draws, Priest Andrejs Voss, and Polish Kazik, who suffers from night blindness. They face freezing nights, lack of food and water, mosquitoes, an endless desert, the Himalayas, as well as many moral and ethical dilemmas throughout the journey towards freedom.