The end of nineteenth century. Maidservant Madara is in love with farmhand Andrs, yet she marries a rich and old household owner. As time passes, her heart hardens and things get complicated when Andrs returns to the neighborhood and Madara's husband dies leaving her widowed with a son.

The first film in a duology based on the biography of Latvian revolutionary Jānis Fabricius. Mārtiņš Venta, the son of a forest ranger, enrolls in a Riga gymnasium and becomes an underground activist, while his classmate, Dace, a teacher's daughter, is expelled from the Riga school for singing the revolutionary song Kā gulbji balti padebeši iet. Dace becomes an actress, but Mārtiņš is drafted into the tsar's army. He refuses to participate in the shooting of a workers' demonstration and is sentenced to exile, but before his deportation, Mārtiņš is allowed to marry Dace in prison.

The 1930s. Young fisherman Oskars Klava dreams of new nets to help him gain independence from the collector Garoza but he lacks the trust of old fishermen.