A young man pushed beyond his endurance remembers his life on the roof of a tall building. He's there to commit suicide.

An adaptation of one of the greatest greek novellas ('The Murderess' by Alexandros Papadiamantis). Fragkogiannou (Maria Alkaiou), a hard-done by, deranged woman after a life full of hardship, recalls the past by her newborn girl grandchild’s crib. Her mother was a wicked woman and one of her sons was a criminal. Lost in a haze, she strangles the baby as she is concvinced that girls can cause their family only trouble. Later, she lets a little girl drown in a well, while she drowns three other little girls, one of whom is a newborn baby. This is her way of sparing children and parents of the inevitable suffering in life.

Melina Mercouri plays Maya, a jet-setting Greek actress who returns to her homeland to undertake the role of Medea. Searching for inspiration and clues as to how a mother could kill the children she loves, Maya discovers Brenda (Ellen Burstyn), a bible-spouting American woman serving time in an Athens prison for that very crime.