Synopsis:

At the very beginning of the movie, the author’s point to the fact that the movie is inspired by a real event and that the time of the action encompasses a period of several decades. The setting of the action, with the exception of the beginning and the end of the movie is the Albania of the days when it was "a big bunker, a prison in to which nobody could go, nor escape from, years of madness when everybody was everybody's enemy." Ohrid, in the years after the war. Young Konstantin Bocvarov meets Elena Zlatarova, a Macedonian from Korca, Albania, in Ohrid. Strong love develops in the year 1948, a year known for the tragic consequences to the individual destinies of many in the then Yugoslavia, as well as of many in the neighboring countries, that chose socialism after the pattern of Stalin in the Soviet Union. The border with neighboring Albania is closed. Communication between the young lovers is impossible. Konstantin longs for Elena who is across the lake and decides to have an uncertain adventure, a trip across the lake in a rowing boat, in order to get to her. He starts on a journey he will not come back from for forty years. He gets caught in a storm, loses the oars, loses his direction in space and sets himself off to his destiny. He is found by an old Albanian on the Albanian shore of the lake. In Albania, the country of bunkers, his story seems impossible to believe. He is treated as a spy, he is physically tortured, and punished by imprisonment in a camp where there are many like him. After getting out of the camp, he finds Elena and their life together finally begins. Konstantin finds a job in Tirana, their daughter is born there. However, life full of stress and misery reflects on the relations between the spouses. Konstantin dreams of going back to his fatherland. But, instead of going to Ohrid, he again ends up in a camp. Years of agony pass, Elena has only rare opportunities to visit him in the camp. Finally, after many years, old and exhausted he goes back to Elena in Korca. The daughter, Donka, is a grown girl. Life goes on without many words, but with a great sorrow for his country. At the end, the time starts to go back. Elena, Konstantin, and their daughter are in Ohrid, the town where their love began.