In 1942, Red Army officer Nikolai Kiselyov receives orders to evacuate over 200 Jewish women, children, and elderly men facing brutality and death in Nazi-occupied Belarus. These exhausted, starving, terrified and bereaved people, deeply scarred by the horrors they have witnessed, must trek hundreds of kilometers along forest paths to regain hope of survival and faith in the future.

A girl escapes from a village that has been burned by the Nazi. She meets a traveling circus troupe. Soon the troupe is confronted by the Nazi and only a juggling girl can save one of them.

A young man's life is set in motion by his friend's suicide. He faces unpredictable circumstances, desperately trying to escape the Hood and start a new life. The Hood, however, holds onto him with suffocating love.