The story of Cevher and his family and their daily struggles as seasonal workers in the cotton fields of Southern Turkey. Cevher depends on the family earnings from the fields to pay blood money for a murder one of his relatives committed. On the cotton fields, people also have to compete with machines, which are preferred to human workers. Eventually, the workers unite and go on strike.

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.