A newly appointed teacher arrives at a remote village school in 1947. The famous journalist and distinguished poet was downgraded for illegal publications and forbidden anti-Soviet verses. Suspicious locals still prefer to test his loyalties, while children wilingly recite his verses from 'To My Soviet Motherland', written under pressure to prase Uncle Lenin. Eventually, an unforgotten friend shows him a secret wintery path to the Dainava resistance platoon's underground bunker.

Artyom, a regular butchery worker, gets confused with his life circumstances. Suddenly he comes up with an unusual way out of his crisis.

In a Russian-occupied town in southeastern Ukraine, where burying the dead has been forbidden, the church of a young priest, Andriy, has been turned into a morgue for executed Ukrainian civilians. As the occupation tightens its grip, Andriy quietly begins to resist, secretly returning the bodies to their families at great personal risk. Along the way, he forms an unexpected bond with Makarov, an 11-year-old boy who becomes the silent witness to his rebellion.