The story is based on Konstantine Gamsakhurdia's novel and depicts the social and political changes taking place in Soviet Georgia in the 1930s through the line of the main characters: Tarash Emkhvari and Arzakan Zvambaya.

Alexi leaves the house of his father and stepmother and rents an apartment. He wants to be independent and find his place in the world. But no basic changes ensue – he has the same friends, with the same trivial conversations and the same inactivity. Only the death of his favorite teacher, to whom the young man felt very close, really changes his habitual way of life. Alexi makes a decision: he refuses a place at a research institute and leaves for a teaching job at a village school, the same school his mentor used to work at.