“Rescue dawn” tells the story of Dieter Dengler, who was born in Germany and who immigrates to the USA with the age of 18 to fulfil his dream to become a combat-pilot. The film bases on a true story and is also the base for Werner Herzog’s documentation “Little Dieter needs to fly” (1997). The young man, who bristles with energy, joins the Navy und is based with his unit at the Golf of in the Tonkin to participate in the secret bombardment of Laos. But Dieter is shot down over the jungle and becomes a POW of the Laotian Pathet Lao. Dieter is tortured before stucked in a cage in a POW camp in the jungle. There he meets a small group of other prisoners who share his destiny- admittedly for more than one year, so that they are mostly demoralised. Dieter immediately starts making plans for his breakout but has to realized, that he has to wait until the rain season to have a chance. At first not everybody of the group of POWs is convinced to try the breakout but as they anticipate, that the guards have the plan to execute them all, they have no choice. Dieter is finally saved and so one of the few POW’s who survived Laos.