In the Carpathian Mountains of 19th-century Ukraine, love, hate, life and death among the Hutsul people are as they’ve been since time began. Ivan is drawn to Marichka, the beautiful young daughter of the man who killed his father. But fate tragically decrees that the two lovers will remain apart.
Three Cossacks preparing for a meal and gather to smoke their pipes as their meal cooks. Out of tobacco, one of them goes off to investigate smoke on the horizon. He is captured by foreign invaders and must be rescued by his friends.
When a partisan attack on a Nazi officer sets off a chain of brutal recriminations, the inhabitants of a German-occupied Ukrainian village are faced with a sickening dilemma lest they not disclose the whereabouts of the fugitives at large.
