A urban Turkish teacher is transferred for political reasons to a backward Kurdish village in the mountains near the Iranian border. He is welcomed with distrust, but during that harsh year the mutual cultural misunderstandings fade away.

The passionate love between a former boxer and a beautiful blind woman.

Because of a local blood feud, a peasant family decides to sell its sheep - a most precious commodity - in far away Ankara. During their long train ride, bribes must be paid to petty officials, sheep are stolen or die in the packed, airless wagons, and the sick wife of one of the family's sons becomes deathly ill.