A historical biopic about the mathematician Emil Julius Gumbel, who became public enemy number and was the first professor to lose his chair when the Nazis seized power. After fleeing to the USA, he is one of the co-founders of extreme value statistics. The life of E. J. Gumbel is retold using archive material and animated scenes by artist Nuno Viegas. The result is a dense portrait of an exceptional scientist and fearless pacifist, a friend and comrade-in-arms of Kurt Tucholsky, Albert Einstein and Carl von Ossietzky. Historians, contemporary witnesses and relatives are interviewed in San Francisco, New York, Heidelberg, Berlin and Zurich in order to get to know this almost forgotten dissident. The film explores the ever-present question of what role an individual can play in a totalitarian society and what dangers one is prepared to accept in order to do so.
