Filmmaker Lech Kowalski explores his belief that struggle is "the epitome of living" in this documentary which compares the wildly different life experiences of himself and his mother. Kowalski's mother came of age in Poland during the early stages of World War II, and after failed attempts to outrun both Nazi and Russian forces she and her family were sent to a Soviet concentration camp, where inmates were tortured, mistreated, and starved to the point where some ate their own lice in a desperate struggle to survive. Kowalski also depicts his own self-inflicted season in hell during his years on the New York City punk rock scene as he wallowed in the sordid underbelly of drug addiction, pornography, prostitution, and streetwise decadence. On both stories, Kowalski finds a message of hope and strength in the midst of almost certain peril.

Lech Kowalski articula East of paradise como un doble confesión. Una mujer de ochenta años, Maria Werla cuenta frente a la cámara su experiencia en el Gulag soviético. Maria era hija de una familia polaca que estuvo obligada a abandonar su país natal durante la guerra. Después de un largo viaje se encontró en Siberia, donde aprendió a sobrevivir y tuvo que afrontar un doloroso camino para reencontrar su propia libertad. La memoria oral fluye de forma prodigiosa, como si el deseo de testimoniar la llevara a construir un relato donde resucita personajes que se cruzaron en su existencia y revive momentos de angustia insoportable que destruyeron su propia juventud. Su palabra evoca la tristeza y provoca un sentimiento de impotencia ante los rumbos de una historia oculta –las purgas estalinistas- que selló numerosas vidas. Tal como reconoce, Maria Werla su juventud estuvo en manos del poder.