The sea vanished without any trace. Where the waves had once splashed, the bottom is cracked from the heat. Here, at the same depth, people stayed to live. An old fisherman, who is trying to escape from the past. The border guard, who changed his boat to jeep for patrol the state border. Former official, who because of other people's machinations, has lost everything - The sea is gone, but hope remains that it will return. And with it returns hope to find love for the neighbor .

The plot tells the story of the Turkestan Autonomy, the unrest in the Bukhara Emirate, the Tashkent plague uprising, and the Andijan rebellion. The film portrays Behbudi’s interactions with prominent Jadid thinkers and supporters of that era, such as Abdurauf Fitrat, Abdulla Qodiriy, and Ismail Gaspirali. It concludes with Behbudi's sentencing to death.

Stas is a young third generation Koryo-saram, a member of the Korean minority in Central Asia that was deported from the Russian Far East by Stalin. He and his three friends Kasoy, Shin and Said try to escape from the grim life in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, and one day, they also try heroin. Then, however, Kasoy gets killed by a gang. 6 years later, Shin has emigrated to South Korea, Said has become a drug addict and Stas is now a police officer. Said commits suicide by overdosing and Stas, who has has since then also become a drug addict, decides to turn over a new leaf. He follows Shin to South Korea, but can this be Hanaan for him, the Promised Land?