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Rachel Lapp (Kelly McGillis), a young Amish widow, is taking her 8-year-old son Samuel (Lukas Haas) to visit her sister in Baltimore. While in the men's room in the train station in Philadelphia, Samuel witnesses the murder of a policeman. When Samuel fingers narcotics lieutenant James McFee (Danny Glover) as one of the killers, Philadelphia detective Captain John Book (Harrison Ford) realizes that both his and Samuel's lives are in danger, so he goes into hiding in the rural Amish community to protect Samuel until the trial. Living and working beside the Amish men, Book finds himself attracted to Rachel, and she to him. However, their disparate backgrounds make their love forbidden by Amish standards.

The screenplay for Witness was co-written by American screenwriters and novelists Pamela Wallace, Earl W. Wallace, and William Kelley. Kelley and Earl Wallace released a novelization of the screenplay in 1985.

In the film, they are mostly speaking modern German. In real life, the Amish have their own German dialect, spoken only occasionally in the film, called Pennsylvania German, commonly known as Pennsylvania Dutch. "Dutch" does not refer to the modern Dutch language but is an English transliteration of the word "Deitsch" (how the Amish refer to their language) which is related to the modern German word "Deutsch", which refers to the German language.

Rachel and John are dancing to (It's A) Wonderful World. It was written by songwriters Sam Cooke, Lou Adler, and Herb Alpert, and recorded by Sam Cooke in the late 1950s. However, it's not Sam Cooke you hear in Witness. That version was sung by Greg Chapman.

Since the release of Witness, there have been several films set in Amish communities including Único testimonio (1988) in which the Amish and the law clash when an Amish infant is killed, Cosecha de fuego (1996) in which an FBI agent investigates an arson in an Amish community, and A las duras y a las maduras (1997) in which two hustlers hide in an Amish community. More recent movies about the Amish include La pura verdad (2004) in which an Amish girl is accused of smothering her baby, Sarah Cain (2007) in which a newspaper reporter attempts to raise her five Amish nieces and nephews, orphaned after the death of her Amish sister, Un abismo en el corazón (2010) based on a true story about the murder of five Amish schoolgirls and the wounding of five others, El desprecio (2011) about the coming of age of a young adopted Amish woman, and Juramento de silencio (2013) in which a police chief, once Amish herself, investigates the murder of a young Amish girl. Hutterites and Old Order Mennonites are distinct (especially linguistically) from each other and from the Amish, but they all have some cultural similarities. Along those lines, Esposa por herencia (1994) may be of interest.