Born in 1912 in Prague, the Jewish, German-speaking Vera Kohn fled to South America in 1939, where she built up a new existence in Ecuador. After an acting career in Quito, she returned to Europe on account of a mental illness and was admitted to Karlfried Graf Dürckheim's therapy centre. She learned his “Initiation Therapy” and returned to Ecuador three years later, healed of her afflictions. She studied psychology Quito, and did her doctorate aged 57. Vera worked as a psychotherapist and taught Zen meditation throughout more than 40 years. The filmmaker places her biography and career in the context of his own personal issues of collective guilt and individual responsibility, his Austrian grandfather having been a member of the SS.