Depicts the final days of World War II in Italy, seen mostly through the eyes of a six-year-old girl. It is a mythic recollection of life on the run when a group of Italian villagers flee from brutal Nazi occupiers in the summer of 1944.

A Russian army patrol is ambushed by Caucasian rebels and two survivors are taken prisoner, by a local patriarch who is hoping to barter them for the release of his captured son. A bond of understanding develops between the soldiers and their captors, but it is broken when plans for their release go awry and a chain of violence and retaliation is precipitated.