One of the few clear voices of resistance to Hitler in 1930s Germany was also a rare dissenter from the tacit collaborators of the era's Christian churches: theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose efforts are chronicled in this film from director Martin Doblmeier. A pacifist, author, and leader of the Confessing Church, Bonhoeffer wrote and preached against the Nazi regime, using a radical new theology rooted in a mixture of traditional Christian thought, the African-American gospel of Harlem's Abyssinian Church, Gandhi's pragmatic nonviolence, and a clear-eyed response to the Nazi racism in his native Germany.

Doblmeier examines Bonhoeffer's journey from novice theology student to coconspirator in a major plot to assassinate Hitler using the documentary style popularized by Ken Burns: narration accompanying slow pans across still photographs alternating with talking-head interviews with both his contemporaries (including several of Bonhoeffer's surviving students) and his spiritual/philosophical inheritors, such as South Africa's Bishop Desmond Tutu.