Sai is forced to marry Tuyet at the age of ten and leaves his home by the river wharf to live with an old man named Kien. As the war against France accelerates, Sai enlists to fight and falls in love with another woman named Huong. While the affair is fated not to last, Tuyet struggles to keep her marriage together.

Living by a river, a father and son make their living by fishing every day. The little boy, Ca, contracts a serious illness. The treatment is very expensive. Will the father be able to catch enough fish to pay for it?

Set in a breath-taking primitive landscape in the mountainous provinces of Vietnam, the film tells the story of a Hmong tribe girl named Pao. She was raised by her stepmother, for her real mother left her when she was little. One day, her stepmother dies in an accident, and she begins to track down her birth mother. But her journey turns out to disclose an unsealed sentimental drama of the family in the past.