At seventeen, Elzbieta finds out that her mother is really her adoptive mother. Elzbieta was smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto when she was five years old and had a very strict Catholic upbringing. The film revolves around Elzbieta's search for her mother, or at least an image of her. This search leads her to America and to Israel. Her story is made public. She avoids the tabloids but, as a government spokesperson, tries to use the media for interviews and political statements. Elzbieta becomes involved in the Solidarnosc Movement. Even in her present-day involvement in Poland she is intimately connected to her own past.