What Departs With Us is an independent feature film directed, written, and co-produced by Carolyn German, with Keri Pagetta co-producing and starring as Ethel Rosenberg. The film imagines Ethel’s final memories in 1953,  cinematically unfolding in a series of flashbacks to reveal pivotal moments in her life.  What Departs With Us illuminates Ethel’s humanity, and invites the audience into the circumstances that influenced the choices she did—or did not—make.

In 1953, at the height of the McCarthy Era, American citizens Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed for espionage. In 2024,  declassified documents confirmed that not only was Ethel innocent of the charges brought against her,  the FBI knew that fact at the time of her arrest.  During the trial, her own brother sealed her fate by lying about her involvement in order to cut a deal for himself and his own guilty wife.