My zyvjom na kraï

A village on a steep bank eroded almost symbolically by the river. The houses are also being worn away and the village is ever becoming more sparsely populated. The young leave, the old die. The old must take care of themselves but cannot manage without their own hard work. A flotilla of barges comes to transport the livestock from the pasture lands. Old women are at the oars. They are the ones who contemplate their lot in life, and the wretched state of their region. Not only has a foul Chernobyl wind blown through it, but other calamities trouble it as well: the waning of tradition and the collapse of a morality which once governed their small world teetering on the edge of civilisation. And, indeed, they themselves now have matured to the very edge of life.