Based on a true story. Yuri, a dissident Soviet writer, is released from detention in a psychiatric hospital, partly through the assistance of one of the doctors, Nina Feldman. Nina and Yuri fall in love and, when he is allowed to emigrate, Nina follows Yuri to England, even though this means leaving her small son in Russia until she can send for him. but once in england, with no income and living in borrowed rooms, they find that things are by no means working out as they had planned.