Ugly, illiterate and an uncommunicative “graduate” of the city orphanage, Nagima is a young woman whose life offers little potential for success or even happiness. Nagima rents a tiny room on the outskirts of the city of Almaty with her fellow orphanage “graduate” the pregnant, and equally isolated, Anya. In the midst of giving birth to her child, tragedy strikes and Anya dies. Never knowing her mother, the newborn girl must be submitted to the orphanage and so Nagima sees the vicious cycle of life in repetitious action and becomes severely depressed at the cruelty of life.
Suddenly laid off from a factory staffed by deaf-mute people, Sveta’s house loan pushes her into a highly unethical line of work.
Aliya, a 36 year old Kazakh lesbian, has, for the first time in her life, tried to play the Green Card Lottery and won. Now she cannot decide whether to leave Kazakhstan or stay. On one hand, Aliya is tired of the stagnation, corruption, and dictatorship of the Kazakh society, she wants changes in her life. But on the other, she is afraid of uncertainty and to start all over again in a foreign country.
