1951. After spending two years filming in Paris, famed director David Merrill returns to Hollywood, where a witch-hunt is raging. The legendary city of dreams is imbued with an atmosphere of fear and suspicion, the career and personal life of his best friends collapses before the eyes of the shocked director, and soon David himself becomes the object of close attention of FBI agents. Not wanting to be a snitch, he finds himself on the "blacklist" of outcasts and realizes to his horror that only obedient cooperation with the "inquisitors" will reopen the doors of studios and agencies for him.