Anishoara is a 15-year old girl living with her grandfather and little brother in a small village among the rolling green hills of Moldova. Her life is marked by the quotidian rhythms of country life; in summer she feels the overwhelming sensation of first love when on a trip with friends to the melon harvest. In autumn a strange German tourist disrupts her otherwise calm existence. In winter she travels for the first time to the sea alongside the young man with whom she fell in love. In spring she longs for her lover's return, but when that moment comes it's not what she expected.
In a small village in the Republic of Moldavia, an old woman dies, leaving her son Petru and her granddaughter Anisoara behind. According to their tradition, the whole village mourns and bids farewell. After the death watch during a stormy night they make their way to the cemetary. The old men carry the heavy coffin over stony paths up to the sacred hill. The sun is high and the way seems endless, but against the thirst there is wine and against the grief there is singing. So in this landscape of paradisal beauty, joy mixes with sorrow and in the end, life stands above death
