The story is based on Konstantine Gamsakhurdia's novel and depicts the social and political changes taking place in Soviet Georgia in the 1930s through the line of the main characters: Tarash Emkhvari and Arzakan Zvambaya.

Nunu and Iago are in love with each other. The married guard Girgola wants to get hold of the woman. Girgola gets Iago arrested and makes Nunu marry his retarded brother. On one occasion he finds the woman alone and rapes her. Nunu jumps in the river to commit suicide but gets saved by Iago’s friends. Iago escapes from jail, but Girgola attacks his hideout and haves him killed together with his friends. Girgola also kills Nunu’s old father and accuses Nunu of the murder. Nunu is tied to a pole and dies in the exile.

A wealthy Ossetian prince adopts a foundling and raises her as his own daughter, Fatima. As Fatima grows up, she falls in love with her stepbrother, Dzhambulat. However, when Dzhambulat goes to war and disappears, Fatima defies her father’s wishes and decides to marry a poor labourer.

A poor nobleman, Platon Samanishvili, has a big family. One day, his long-time widowed father, Bekina, tells him that he'd like to remarry. Platon has a problem now: if his father gets a child, he has to share his already small land property.