- Description
Antonina Zabinska (Jessica Chastain) loves working in her husband's zoo in Warsaw. She gets on much better with the animals than with people, she is not afraid to get between the restless elephants in the enclosure, it is actually she who leads the whole garden with her energy and determination. But even she is unable to face the rolling tides of history. When Germany invades Poland on 1 September 1939, the garden feels the impact almost immediately. The bombing and shelling of the city destroys everything the Zabinskis have spent years building in an instant. The animal-free garden becomes a warehouse for German weapons, and Antonina and her husband Jan (Johan Heldenbergh) can only use their expertise to raise pigs. But here lies the beginning of the road to their daring plan. The pigs are fed on the leftovers produced by the inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto. And Jan regularly drives a truck to collect them. But it's not just the scraps they take back, but also the people they hide in the cellars under the garden. The risky operation is made all the more complicated by the fact that the Nazi Nazi executioner Lutz Heck (Daniel Brühl), a prominent zoologist who not only has a professional soft spot for Antonina, is constantly circling the garden...