In 1923, 67-year-old inveterate cigar smoker Sigmund Freud discovers he has mouth cancer, a truth doctors have long hidden from him. Despite his diagnosis, Freud lives on for 15 more years, convinced the cigars that were slowly destroying him increased his productivity and gave him control over himself.
At the same time, a different sort of cancer was consuming Europe. In 1933, Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany, annexing Freud's home country of Austria five years later. With his books burning in fascist bonfires and his peers fearing for his life, Freud has no choice but to leave Vienna for London, his final home.
With accuracy and sobriety, Suzanne Leclair and William Roy paint a raw and nuanced portrait of the controversial father of psychoanalysis in his last days.