This documentary film, directed by Joris Ivens, features a host of American expatriate literary talent. Dos Passos, as well as Ernest Hemingway, Lillian Hellman, and Archibald MacLeish work on the picture.

Hemingway and Dos Passos initially argue about the premise of the film. Dos Passos investigates the arrest of Spanish friend Jose Robles; he discovers that Robles was executed by the Communists as a Fascist spy. Dos Passos believes Robles was killed because he had protested Soviet infiltration of the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway, ever the biographer of heroics, trumpets that Dos Passos has lost faith in the Republicans due to cowardice; their friendship is subsequently strained severely.