Trama

1944. Walter Proska is a young Wehrmacht soldier who begins to question the purpose of the war, who the real enemy is and whether his real duty should be to his fatherland or his own conscience.

Directed by Academy Award-winner Florian Gallenberger from Sigefried Lenz's international bestseller, "Der Überläufer" is set in the summer of 1944. German soldier Walter Proska is about to return to the Eastern Front when his train is blown up by his love interest, the partisan Wanda. Together with a scattered bunch of fellow soldiers, cut off from the front, he awaits certain death while his commanding officer, Willi Stehauf, issues ever more senseless and inhumane orders. Proska's encounter with a young Polish woman fighting as a partisan and his friendship with his comrade Kürschner increasingly makes him doubt his oath of allegiance. As the Red Army draws closer, Proska becomes a prisoner of war and the only way he can save himself is by defecting to the enemy.—Dreamtool Entertainment

Pomerania 1944, the last Nazi war summer. [PART 1] Naively patriotic young Wehrmacht soldier Walter Proska leaves his Lyck farm home to rejoin the Eastern front, where the unstoppable Soviets approach. He helps foxy local Polish girl Wanda Zielinski hide in his carriage 'returning her brother's ashes home', only to see her flee for a checkup in the woods, and the urn explode when he drops it in the river, shortly before a partisan bomb wrecks train and track. Lightly wounded, he reports to NCO Willi Stehauf's godforsaken guard post in marsh village Rokitno. The cynical old fox terrorizes the Polish locals, presumed all partisans to be exterminated, but also his poor men. Bright Wolfgang Kürschner becomes Walter's bunk-mate and friend, supporting each-other and incurring absurd joint punishments from the sadistic tyrant, who even shoots a curate in the back after declaring him innocent.—KGF Vissers

[PART 2] Naïve German soldier Walter Proska continues to suffer the reign of terror of sadistic old NCO Willi Stehauf at their godforsaken forest post in Rokitno but soon learns his company has abandoned the front due to the unstoppable Soviet advance. Stehaud refuses to flee, the Polish partisans get more daring, killing one of two mates risking a lake swim to wash off the filth. Suddenly they are surrounded and disarmed by the Poles, among whom is Walter's lover Wanda, who reproaches him unwittingly having shot her brother in self-defense, so she lets him run, only to be captured in the wasteland by a Red Army patrol.—KGF Vissers

[PART 3] In a Russian POW camp in Silesia in 1945, Walter Proska would have been left to die from a foot injury hadn't he been recognized and invited to join the unstoppable Red Army by his convicted deserter friend Wolfgang Kürschner, orderly of the fairly gentle CO. Walter becomes a hero by convincing a whole surrounded Wehrmacht unit to surrender into captivity. At the celebration, he finds his Polish beloved Wanda active as performer, sole survivor as the Russian shot all male Partisans. After two love nights, they plan to run away, but Wolfgang finds out in time. Showing the CO a shortcut past his brother in law Kurt's farm, their unit is shot at there, he can save some but Kurt forces the mates to shoot him in self-defense, his sister Maria Rogalsk is taken away.—KGF Vissers