A Macedonian village has always struggled to find ways to bring water to its arid land - a struggle that may be won when a native son returns from America with the idea of setting up a watermill. Such an enterprise gets two villages in conflict over water rights, threatening to permanently turn people against each other. In the past, the territory had been occupied by the Italian armies, and a flashback shows a massacre in one village, a revelation that disaster has been a part of their history, in one way or another. No matter how he argues, the young man who advocated the watermill loses out to the builders of a dam - something that does not bode well for the low-lying village.