Irina is a part-time waitress in a small Bulgarian town. On the very same day when she is fired, her husband gets into a serious accident. Irina's family is trapped in poverty. To make ends meet, she becomes a surrogate mother. Fights, despair and the seed of life growing in her belly bring on another wave to this rough and wrecked life. Slowly, Irina discovers what it means to love and to forgive.
A boy starts an affair with his famous dad's young new wife - an instinctive way of victory of a confused soul over his parent's inadequacy. Ever haunting dreams about his real mother start overwhelming the boy more and more often. Unsuspecting a thing, the father keeps trying to carry out his own views on beauty upon their joint living. In vain - faith intends differently.
Three lonely women meet in Krapetz, a village on the Black Sea coast, trying to escape the arrogance and the triteness of "modern" post-communist society. The idyll continues for several days, but is soon destroyed. Crime, violence and corruption reach the three women even in this far, deserted place.
The end of the 70s. Anton Krastev, a DOP and his wife Diana are separated by the Iron curtain - she fled with their son Antoan to Western Berlin while he stayed in Bulgaria. She believes that Antoan can only be cured in Germany. But Anton can't live without his job. He works with the best film director who is a high ranking Communist. The State Security Services are keeping a zealous eye on Anton. His phone calls are being taped, his letters are being read. His close relations to the power people of the day make him even more suspicious. The State Security Services put an end to Anton's relation with his wife. Thorn apart, Anton and Diana go through love, alienation and hate. There comes a time though when the powerful friends of Anton lose their power and he loses everything that he's ever loved - his work, his wife and son. Thirty years later Anton shoots the story of his own life. But those who now direct the movie are the very same people who once persecuted him.
Bulgaria, the night of October 18, 1922. A rampageous young man - an American, is forced to get off the Orient Express at a small station. The chief of the railway station and his daughter are quite unwilling to put up the stranger. Gradually, the American wins their trust. When the father understands that his daughter has decided to go away to Paris with the American, he makes a potion to sedate him and gets him on a train on the sly. In the morning all that has left from the guest is a piece of paper, which reads "Ernest Hemingway".