Based on a novel by Branko Ćopić and set during World War II, the film tells the story of a Bosnian Serb village in the mountains of Bosnia and its villagers who found themselves divided along two opposing ideological lines in the face of the Axis invasion and subsequent occupation of the country, represented by the royalist Chetniks and the communist Partisans. These two opposing sides are personified in the Partisan commander nicknamed Španac (lit. "Spaniard", played by Mustafa Nadarević) and a former Royal Army officer Miloš Radekić (played by Branislav Lečić). Španac sees Radekić as the cause of villagers' resistance to the new communist ideology, and so the main plot revolves around the conflict between them.