[2] The film opens just as construction has been completed on a railway connecting mountainous regions of eastern Bosnia and western Serbia in 1992.

Luka, a Serbian engineer, has moved to Bosnia from Belgrade with his mentally unstable wife, Jadranka, and his football-playing son, Miloš, to run a railway station and act as caretaker.

Utterly engrossed in his work and blinded by natural optimism, Luka remains deaf to the increasingly persistent rumblings of war, which has broken out in Croatia and threatens to spread.

When the conflict explodes, Miloš is denied his place on the football field when he is enlisted into the Serbian army, and Jadranka disappears on the arm of a Hungarian musician.

Luka intends to exchange Sabaha for Miloš, but the two fall in love after they are forced to flee deeper into Serb-controlled territory.