The village idiot lives in a hut with his sick mother. His neighbors are the Jewish family of the local blacksmith Mendel, and the guy is secretly in love with his youngest daughter Sonya.

Nadya was born with a pathology. She has a large red-burgundy hemangioma on her small face. In the native village Nadya faces the hostility and ridicule of others, furthermore her own family does not accept the girl as she is. Nadya grandmother tries to treat her illness with all religious methods she knows, while Nadya mother constantly dreams of a surgical operation in Moscow. Nadya just wants to be herself. Her only wish is to sing in the choir. After getting into another mess, she ends up in a Moscow hospital, where meets people like her. But even after the physical problem has been resolved nothing changes in her family life.