Lisbon, 1942. The harbor is the last door out to freedom. Thousands wait for one of the scarce tickets, chasing visas and papers in order to escape fascism. On the quay, two men meet by chance. One wants to get to America with his wife but has neither passports nor tickets. The other has both, and is prepared to hand them over to the stranger—on one condition: that he listen to his story before the ship sails at dawn.
Didenko leads the audience, along with the characters, through the night clubs and bars of Lisbon, where refugees and the stranded wait for a future they barely believe in. To the music of all their homelands, a story unfolds of love and betrayal, of hopeless hope and an insatiable appetite for life. It is a love story from the Second World War—and also a story of flight and exile that keeps repeating itself, whatever the time, whatever the place.