At the request of his colleague, the young lawyer goes to the courtroom to replace her, but he mixes up the rooms and ends up defending a brutal criminal. The following is a catastrophe.
The film takes place in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku at the end of the 1980s. At this time, the Soviet Union was starting to fall apart, and with this came the start of a number of ethnic conflicts. Fariz and his family move into a Baku apartment block from war-torn Nagorno-Karabakh. Fariz's relations with his new neighbors are strained by his accusations that it was people like them who failed to support the Azeris in their conflict with ethnic Armenians. The only one who stands up to him is Alik, who acts as peacemaker between him and the older inhabitants of the building. Alik has no reservations about brandishing his gun in order to keep the peace. One day, the apartment managers want to evict a number of musicians who have been squatting in the basement. Alik gets involved, but soon discovers the situation is more complicated that he first believed.
Shot during the Nagorno-Karabakh War, "Fəryad" is only one of its kind. Following the Khojaly Massacre, Ismayil, an officer tasked with collecting the bodies, crosses enemy lines to avenge the brutal murder of a local schoolgirl. There he gets captured by Armenians and waits for the day to be exchanged for an enemy POW.