In the early days of the Great Patriotic War old Kuzmich from the village of Kurakino guesses that a long war lies ahead. As the village falls under German occupation and repressions intensify, he keeps aloof, arousing suspicions. Following the execution of fellow villagers and accusations of betrayal, Kuzmich agrees to serve as a guide for the German detachment, ostensibly to get a horse and save his family. In reality, however, he is planning a sacrificial deception: through his grandson Vaska, he conveys information about the enemy's route to the Soviet troops. At the critical moment, Kuzmich leads the German mountain troopers into a trap, repeating the feat of Ivan Susanin. At the cost of his own life the old man leads the enemy to perdition, becoming a symbol of the people's resistance.

Witnesses is a simple, yet powerful moving trilogy, depicting the horrors of the Holocaust. Each story in the film provides an unusual, yet harrowing perspective on the tragic events during World War II, told from the perspective of three uncanny witnesses. Shoes, the shortest of the stories, does not have a single line of dialogue or even a face featured in it. All we see is a pair of red shoes which beautifully depict first love, then marriage, the start of family life and the onset of the tragic war. Brutus, is a story about a German Shepherd dog separated from her beloved mistress and turned into a guard dog at a concentration camp. The final story, Violin, opens at the beginning of the 20th Century in a violin shop, where the instrument was created as a present for a Jewish boy. The violin becomes witness to the tragic events that followed during the Holocaust. A captivating score, makes this less than conventional film expose the sheer evil and terror that pervaded every aspect of the Holocaust, and is sure to open the eyes of everyone who sees it.