This gripping drama based on a real-life scandal begins in Poland in 1983, when high-spirited high school student Grzegorz Przemyk (Mateusz Górski) is celebrating passing his exams with friends when he is stopped by police and asked for his identity card. At the time, martial law was suspended, and carrying an ID at all times was not necessary. Grzegorz knows this and argues for his rights as a citizen. Angry at being countered, the militia members haul him and his friend, Jurek, to their headquarters where he is brutally beaten. Jurek is the only witness. In the aftermath, the oppressive regime uses the secret service, the media and the courts to threaten Jurek and other people close to the case, including his parents and Przemyk’s mother, activist and poet Barbara Sadowska.