Village drama of love and hate among the Gypsies.

Partisans resist the terror of Italian fascists and Serbian Chetniks in the South-East of Bosnia and Herzegovina during WWII.

Instead of running away from enemy raid, a female partisan-doctor decides to stay and help one of their wounded children.

As Hitler's Nazi army invades Yugoslavia, a Serbian village girl joins the underground movement, falls in love with the Croat soldier Ivan who is an expert in blowing up trains, and inspires villagers young and old to aggressively participate in the resistance.

The plot takes place during the Civil War in Greece, and it shows the fight of communist partisans, against the pro-Western, monarchist government. During the shooting, there was a discord between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union because of the famous IB resolution, which caused Yugoslav authorities to stop supporting Stalinists. Tito's government acknowledged Greek monarchists as a legitimate government, and not wanting to remind the public of their ideological discrepancy, bunkered "Majka Katina" for a few decades.