Ken McMullen's most ambitious film to date traces the story of one of those shadowy figures from the past through whom we seek to learn the true temper of an extraordinary time. She is Zina, Leon Trotsky's daughter, whose copious letters to her father and others form the solid basis to this imaginative interpretation of her life and Europe's troubled times between the communist revolution in the Soviet Union and the rise of fascism in Germany. When she is sent away from his island exile by the deposed revolutionary leader for psychiatric treatment in Vienna, her mental instability, born of her strange relationship with her famous father, becomes more and more a parallel for the madness of the times. Who could possibly say she was mad, faced with her circumstances and the events around her in the world? Domiziana Giordano, whose performance in Tarkovsky's NOSTALGHIA was so striking, is again a magnificent presence, while ian McKellen as the psychiatrist and Philip Madoc as Trotsky also contribute notable performances.