An adaptation of a story by Mikhailo Kotsyubinsky, a Ukrainian writer executed in the Stalinist purges but rehabilitated in 1955, that anticipates the Ukrainian "poetic cinema" of the '60s in its focus on star-crossed lovers and its celebration of nature. Set in the 1830s, the film follows two lovers on the run - a girl forced into marriage and her boyfriend, a serf who's being sought by the authorities - as they try to make their way to freedom.