In Stara Zburjivka, a remote hamlet in Southern Ukraine, the tragicomic sheriff duo Viktor and Volodya have to solve crimes such as the theft of two ducks. Other issues that need urgent resolve are neighbour disputes, drunkenness, and physical abuse - many of these being consequences of the prevalent unemployment, poverty and illiteracy in the village. Some of the villagers are quite peculiar: a man puts a snake in his woman’s shed; another one is on the loose with an axe; a third has a tendency to eat his neighbours’ dogs, which makes him somehow unpopular in the village. Driving in a yellow Lada with its own little Ukrainian flag, the two heroes travel from incident to incident trying to calm things down and re-establish order. The seasons pass until political developments reach the village by way of the TV screen, showing the separatist conflicts already unfolding elsewhere. The town folks are dipping in icy water and laughing, but the pastoral slowly ends with the advent of Euromaidan and the descent into the limbo of a civil crisis. Around the time of the celebrations for the country’s 70th Independence Day, the men of the village are drafted into the army. Roman Bondarchuk directs with a keen eye for the comical side of everyday situations and the urgency of the history happening elsewhere.