Ivan commits suicide in a smelting pot, and the factory is shut down shortly afterwards due to economic liberalization rendering it nonprofitable.

Sergiy then finds himself in a new job driving a water truck and delivering to areas where pollution from the war has made local sources unpotable.

[10] He has trouble adapting to his new life until he meets Katya, previously an archaeologist who now works as a humanitarian activist for the Black Tulip Mission, a volunteer organization exhuming and identifying the war dead.

[10][11] Sergiy is offered the opportunity to escape his situation, after saving a member of an environmental NGO from a mine, but it is implied in the conclusion that he has decided to remain with the Black Tulip Mission.

[15] In a positive review, Richard Abele of The Los Angeles Times wrote, "we’re fortunate to have artists like Vasyanovych to show us what’s dazzling, strange, tragic, comic, touching and eventually optimistic about the way forward.

[18] In another positive review, Glenn Kenny of The New York Times compared the film's long, static takes to early work by US directors Stanley Kubrick and Jim Jarmusch.