man walking across a bridge with a low angle shot soldier

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union captures U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers after shooting down his U-2 spy plane. Sentenced to 10 years in prison, Powers' only hope is New York lawyer James Donovan, recruited by a CIA operative to negotiate his release. Donovan boards a plane to Berlin, hoping to win the young man's freedom through a prisoner exchange. If all goes well, the Russians would get Rudolf Abel, the convicted spy who Donovan defended in court.

The piece opens with Steven Spielberg's family history with the real life events and follows with cast and crew examining the politics and history of the time, the screenplay's inspirations, espionage and intelligence gathering of the era, the story's relevance today, character attributes, and the Francis Gary Powers and Frederic Pryor stories and their depictions in the film.

The engineer troops build a bridge for the infantry to run across.