Hope lives with her husband on the mountain, and all summer makes charcoal in a kiln in the heart of the forest. When it reaches the village the recently released from prison Marco, under the pretext of the foot treatment, hanging out every day, and promises to take her back home, Kavala, which has much nostalgia.

In 1955 a couple of prominent Greek Istanbulites adopt an orphan Greek girl, twelve-year-old Polyxeni, who is separated from her younger brother. She embarks on a new life and a future that looks bright, but she will have to defend what’s rightfully hers.

Sotiris is a police investigator in Athens who lives by a strict moral code. An honest man, he carries himself as though held down by the weight of the world. Dora is a cleaning lady, struggling to get by any way she can. Dealt a rough hand in life, she has developed a rich layer of cynicism and mistrust that informs her every action. When a man Sotiris believes is innocent is arrested for a brutal crime, his attempt to uncover the truth results in a grave mistake. Finding himself on the other side of the law for the first time, he places his fate in Dora, the only witness to his malfeasance and the only person who can help him, for better or for worse.