Albania in the 1960s, the city of Gjirokastra. Katya, a graduate of the Philology Department of Moscow State University, marries an Albanian, a young historian whom she met in Moscow. Soon after Katya enters into a dialogue with the dictator Enver Hoxha at an art exhibition, her husband is arrested on trumped-up charges.

After a devastating earthquake, five lives are buried beneath the rubble-a mother and her child, a young man struggling to stay calm, and two strangers forced to trust each other. As time runs out, their only hope is rescue. If it comes.