How can there be music in the worst place in the world? This powerful and deeply moving documentary reveals how music became a lifeline and form of resistance amid the horrors of the Holocaust. At its heart is 99-year-old cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the last living survivor of the Auschwitz camp orchestras, whose testimony anchors the film with extraordinary clarity and grace.

Through her story, and those of fellow musicians Ilse Weber, Szymon Laks, and Adam Kopyciński, the film illuminates the complex role of music at Auschwitz—where the SS demanded prisoner orchestras perform concerts for their entertainment and play marches that accompanied slave laborers to and from their work, acts survivors often recalled as a grotesque form of torture. Yet even in this brutal, dehumanizing environment, music became a way to endure, to testify, and, at times, to resist.

Interwoven with contemporary performances filmed at emotionally resonant sites around Auschwitz—including by Anita’s son, renowned cellist Raphael Wallfisch—the documentary bridges past and present, giving voice to works born out of suffering and survival. The result is a profound meditation on the power of music to preserve memory, confront barbarity, and offer, even in humanity’s darkest hours, a note of defiance and hope.