July 29th 1975. Thirty-five world leaders gather at Finlandia Hall in Helsinki for an unprecedented three day Cold War extravaganza: The Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe, sometimes referred to as The Helsinki Accord, or known by the sexy acronym CSCE. Based on hundreds of hours of archival footage, The Helsinki Effect deconstructs the anatomy of an often misunderstood diplomatic process, and reveals how it came to impact the world in a decisive way.