New York, 1941. Shortly before his joint suicide with Lotte, Stefan Zweig meets up once more with his first wife Friderike in order to write his last work, "The world of yesterday". Flashback: farewells that anticipate something.

Before Dawn charts the years of exile in the life of famous Jewish Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, his inner struggle for the "right attitude" towards the events in war torn Europe and his search for a new home.