A sailor gets his boat stolen from him after he's set up for a crime.

A young woman struggles to adjust after moving to the city.

June 14, 1941, 3 a.m. Over 40000 people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are deported by Soviets to Siberia. Among them is a philosophy student Erna, a happily married mother of a little girl. Separated from her husband, Erna and her daughter are dispatched together with other women and children to remote Siberian territories. Despite hunger, fear and brutal humiliation Erna never in next fifteen years loses her sense of freedom and hope of returning to homeland.

The filmmaker's grandfather recounts fleeing German-occupied Kyiv just before the massacres at Babyn Yar, while his father tells of his return to Kyiv for the first time since emigrating to the US. In the backdrop, the Soviet translation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is woven through images of the Mississippi River today. The film jumps through time, but the rhythm of an accordion keeps the pace.