Karlygash (translated from Kazakh as "swallow") lives with her husband Ilyas and father-in-law on a horse farm, lost in the Kazakh steppe. Karlygash is a stranger to everyone here, and Ilyas has not yet forgotten about his first love for a girl named Aina. Everything changes with the arrival of a foreigner in their village - Frenchman Louis, a photographer who went on a trip after breaking up with his wife.

Mukhabbat, an Uzbek immigrant, works at a convenience store on the outskirts of Moscow. Just like the rest of the immigrants at the store, she is forced to work without getting paid and endure mental and physical abuse, until she overcomes her fear one day and takes her fate into her own hands.