Year 1648. Ukraine under the oppression of Poland. Polish nobility committing outrage, burning villages one after another. Hetman of Zaporozhian Cossacks Bogdan Khmelnitsky gathers the army of defenders of the motherland...
1914, Imperial Russia. A group of Ukrainian peasants searching for a better life in the Taurida steppe end up working at the landholding of the aristocratic Falz-Fein family. Friends Vustya and Hanna are courted by a revolutionary and the landowner's son, both rising their hopes and dreams.
The film tells the story of a bitter, hard life of laborers in Ukraine during the second half of the XIX century.
