Overview

In October 1813, the largest battle to date took place near Leipzig: the decisive battle of the Wars of Liberation against Napoleonic foreign rule—the Battle of the Nations. Of the approximately 600,000 soldiers from over a dozen peoples and nations who fought in the battle, around 92,000 were killed or wounded. Many more victims among the civilian population of Leipzig were claimed by a typhus epidemic following the battle. The fully animated film by Leipzig-born animator Schwarwel is about these victims, about war, about its destruction and suffering, and we follow the paths of Napoleon, his adversaries, officers and soldiers, a market vendor, a surgeon, a pastor, a cemetery doctor, and a war widow through the turmoil of October 18, 1813, the day that finally decided the battle.