The film is an adaptation of the life of 18th-century Armenian poet and troubadour Sayat-Nova.
1920. Last days of the first Armenian Republic. Armenian Army fights on two fronts: war with Turkish army in the west, and Red Army incursion and Bolshevik mutiny in the northeast. Hayk Saroyan returns to his native provincial town from Russia to assume a minor post at Dashnak Army command center. His brother Gevorg, captain at the same command center, is a real patriot prefering death to "eternal exile", army power to relegious mercifullness. Very soon a suspicion creeps inside him: his beloved brother is Bolshevik spy.
After graduating from the institute, one of the two friends of different profiles, Levon, will go to work in the distant mines, and the incumbent Karlen takes the chair of the head, but this does not bring him happiness.
