Max and Karl are best friends and students at a presigious Berlin art academy in the 1930s. As the political climate shifts and the Nazis seize power, Karl, a rising star of the avant-garde, is labeled a degenerate, while Max, the traditionalist, takes advantage of the shifting tides. When the situation between them becomes impossible, one of them escapes Germany in a gut-wrenching, twisted betrayal. Forty years later the survior, now a world renowned artist, struggles with both his failing health and the ghost of his past.