Plot

After surviving Auschwitz, a former cabaret singer has her disfigured face reconstructed and returns to her war-ravaged hometown to seek out her gentile husband, who may or may not have betrayed her to the Nazis.

In the aftermath of WWII, Nelly, a Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, horribly disfigured from a bullet wound in her face, undergoes a series of facial reconstruction surgeries and decides to find her husband Johnny who works at the Phoenix club in Berlin. Undoubtedly, Nelly is stunning, yet, her new self is beyond recognition, so Johnny, the man who may have betrayed her to the Nazis, will never imagine that the woman in front of him who bears an uncomfortable and unsettling resemblance to his late wife, is indeed her. Without delay, and with the intention to collect the deceased's inheritance, Nelly will go along with Johnny's plot and she will impersonate the dead woman, giving the performance of a lifetime before friends and relatives in a complex game of deceit, duplicity, and ultimately, seduction. In the end, during this masquerade, as the fragile and broken Nelly tries to find out whether Johnny betrayed her or not, she will have to dig deep into her wounded psyche and inevitably choose between revenge and forgiveness.—Nick Riganas

Badly injured, her face destroyed, Auschwitz survivor Nelly returns to her hometown, Berlin. Having barely recovered from facial surgery, Nelly sets out to find her husband, Johnny - the love of her life who is convinced that his wife is dead. When Nelly finally tracks him down, he recognises nothing but an unnerving resemblance and doesn't believe it could really be her. Hoping to secure her family's inheritance, Johnny suggests to Nelly that she take on the identity of his late wife.

After the World War II, the Jewish Lene Winter brings her friend Nelly Lenz back to a hospital in Germany. Nelly is a former singer that has survived Auschwitz concentration camp, but her face has been disfigured by a shot. Now, Lene uses the fortune Nelly has inherited from her deceased Jewish family and the German plastic surgeon reconstructs her face different from her original. Lene tries to convince Nelly to move to a seaside town in Germany or to Palestine, but she prefers to stay in Berlin to look for her believed husband Johnny Lenz instead. She seeks him out and finds him at the Phoenix cabaret, where he works. She meets him but he does not recognize Nelly. However, he notes a disturbing resemblance with Nelly. She says that her name is Esther and Johnny proposes a scheme, training her to impersonate Nelly and get her inheritance. Nelly tells Lene that Johnny loves Nelly, and she replies that her husband betrayed her to the Germans when he was arrested. Nelly does not believe, but when Lene commits suicide, she leaves a letter to Nelly with evidence of what Johnny had made to her. But Nelly proceeds with Johnny's plan.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil