During World War II, there was the 900-day siege of Leningrad, a protracted Nazi operation that took the lives of millions of soldiers and civilians. Against this violent backdrop, we follow a British journalist who has been separated from her American lover and who is the target of a KGB investigation. The only help she finds comes from a militiawoman and two children, and together they fight to stay alive, while a vicious campaign that leads to mass starvation, despair, and death unfolds around them.