Lena is a talented midwife and gynaecologist, her husband Serezha is an actor at a provincial drama theatre. They are close and gentle with each other, but there is no sex. Lena suspects that Serezha has an affair, but she worries quietly and does not reveal her jealousy. Instead of sorting out her relationship with her husband, Lena starts to betray him with chance acquaintances. Gradually Lena’s parallel life gets out of control and changes her original life.

Sascha lives in a village on the Kola Peninsular in northern Russia and dedicatedly manages what is left of an old collective farm. He gets on well with his farm workers who respect him and also tolerate his more or less clandestine love-affair with Anya, a secretary at the local government office. But then Sascha is suddenly faced with a dilemma: the district’s self-seeking administrators, none of whom could be termed squeamish, offer him a lucrative deal for the farm. In legal terms, Sascha doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on since his lease on the farm was only agreed with a handshake. The pressure mounts, and even more so when his employees convince him to stand firm. Against the backdrop of a landscape exposed to the elements, this unflinching man’s destiny takes its course.