The film traces the development of leading 20th century public intellectual, Isaiah Berlin, in the context of his life and times, through archival film and recordings, from his birth in Riga, to his London childhood in the 1920s, his Oxford education, and then as reporter in the British diplomatic service during WW2. Encountering poet Anna Akhmatova changed the course of his life. His major contributions to the philosophy of freedom are explored through in-depth interviews with Michael Ignatieff, Henry Hardy, Alfred Brendel, Fania Oz- Salzberger, and Yuli Tamir.