The film tells the story of a young single mother who must make her way to South Ossetia in order to reunite with her son whom she had sent away before the war.

In comparison to Olympus Inferno and 5 Days of War, August Eighth was not marketed as a "search for the truth" film.

Her seven-year-old son Artyom Fadeev uses his imagination to escape the pain he feels over his parents' separation.

On August 5, 2008, Kseniya receives a telephone call from Artyom's father Zaur, an Ossetian who serves as a peacekeeper in South Ossetia.

The conversation continues loudly as Kseniya departs in the lift and it leaves Yegor publicly humiliated.

Kseniya immediately flies to Vladikavkaz, then takes a bus through the Roki tunnel into South Ossetia.

That night, the Battle of Tskhinvali begins and the central square is bombarded by Georgian BM-21 Grad rockets.

Kseniya joins Zaur's friend Khasan Baroyev, known as "Ilya" on a Russian military and journalist convoy.

All seems lost but then the Georgian army is attacked with a Sukhoi Su-25 air strike giving Kseniya and Artyom the opportunity to escape.

He and Kseniya meet with Lyoha, who tells them that the Russian forces have captured the city of Gori, resulting in Russia winning the war.

The central plot is based on two true stories: a man dragged his ex-girlfriend from South Ossetia in August 2008; and the second on the producer's friend's son who suffered dissociation.

In the first week of distribution the film was in the lead at the box office and collected more than 140,000,000 rubles (about 5,000,000 dollars) for the first weekend.

In total, August Eighth netted about 10,000,000 dollars in Russian theaters, much less than the gross of Faiziyev's previous film, Turkish Gambit.

A French dub of the movie called War Zone was released on DVD and Blu-ray in France on 7 August 2013.