It's the story of a man named Yakov Bok, a Jew, living in the Russian Empire who was unjustly imprisoned based on prejudice and the Blood libel against Jews. It was based on the incidents of the Beilis Trial in 1913, in which Menahem Mendel Beilis was wrongly accused of having murdered a Ukrainians boy named Andrei Yushchinsky, with blood libel being presented as the alleged motivation. The film is based on Bernard Malamud's novel, which in turn was drawn from an actual experience.