In Czarist Russia, around 1911, a Russian-Jewish handyman, Yakov Bok, is wrongly imprisoned for a most unlikely crime.Set in tsarist Russia around the turn of the century and based on a true story of a Russian Jewish peasant Yakov Bok who was wrongly imprisoned for a most unlikely crime - the "ritual murder" of a Gentile child in Kiev. We witness the unrelenting detail of the peasant-handyman's life in prison and see him gain in dignity as the efforts to humiliate him and make him confess fail.