The film takes place in Veles (city) during the Republic of Macedonia's post-independence years. It tells the story of 13-year-old Marko Trifunovski (Marko Kovacevic), a talented but abused Macedonians (ethnic group) schoolboy whose harsh circumstances gradually transform him into a criminal. Two mentors offer Marko hopes of a better future, but they eventually fail him, leading to his catastrophic change. The illusory nature of these hopes is foreshadowed by the film's epigraph, an aphorism from Friedrich Nietzsche's ''Human, All Too Human'': "Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man."