Georges Stanescu

With his nose pressed against the glass, four-year-old Ionel watches the kids playing ball in the street with great interest. His father, a schoolteacher, has lost his job. Now he goes to various institutions in vain, because in bourgeois Romania it is not easy to find a job. Ionel waits for his father every night and while waiting for him he dreams of getting a real yellow ball for his birthday. His father realizes that it is necessary to get the money and buy the ball. After all, the boy is crippled, and the ball is the only hope for him to get well...

This film is the second of a two-part historical and biographical portrait of the communist politician and anti-fascist Ernst Thälmann. Autumn, 1918: Somewhere on Germany’s western front, Ernst Thälmann, age twenty-four, is calling on his fellow soldiers to put down their guns and join him in the communist struggle at home. When Hamburg’s Police Commissioner blocks a much-needed food shipment to the workers of Petrograd, Ernst battles to see it allowed through. Until his murder on August 18, 1944, Ernst remained true to his political convictions in the face of many setbacks.