The Soviet Union has collapsed, but the promised prosperity has not reached Guria, in western Georgia. Electricity flickers between light and darkness, policemen steal trolleybus cables to sell as scrap, and the widower Zuriko, a forty-five-year-old hazelnut farmer, refuses the paltry sums the Italian buyers offer for his harvest. His best friend Gela helps him search for better buyers and introduces him to potential wives, who inevitably fail to satisfy Zuriko’s disapproving ex-mother-in-law. After surviving a highway robbery, Zuriko pursues Maya, the village music teacher. Meanwhile Zuriko’s son Achi suffers his own heartbreak when the girl he loves, Eka, is “kidnapped” and marries his rival, Beso. In Guria, Zuriko’s world shifts constantly between hardship and absurdity, beauty pageants and violence, love and sadness.
