The war film that's not a war film. A film about the mental institution which backdrop is the Chechen war. A story about the patients living in an institution during the war on the border of Chechnia and Russia during the war. The patients have to continue living their day to day life after being invaded twice over, and they have to deal with their sicknesses.

Wandering minstrel Ashik Kerib falls in love with a rich merchant's daughter, but is spurned by her father and forced to roam the world for a thousand and one nights. Now presumed dead by those he loves, he performs for the poor and unfortunate on his journeys through the wilderness. Parajanov's visually ravishing 'tableaux vivants' tell Lermontov's romantic tale while Turkish and Azerbaijani folk songs transport us into its mystical landscapes.