Florya is sent by a village in Byelorussia by German forces' intrusion in to the woods to join the Resistance fighters that are weary, against his family's dreams. There he meets with a girl, Glasha, who follows him back. Florya finds fellow peasants massacred and his family, on returning home. His continuing survival amidst the debris of war becomes a struggle between hope and despair, increasingly nightmarish.