The film’s events take place on a single day: August 24, 2022, the day Ukraine celebrates the 31st anniversary of the renewal of independent statehood. The film combines places and people that best capture the country’s wartime spirit. The locations are: the relatively safe cities of Kyiv and Lviv; the cities under daily missile fire of Kharkiv and Mykolaiv; a trench at the frontlines near Donetsk; and the beaches of Odesa. 

The film presents a day in the life of a beach police patrol, a woman anti-tank missile operator, a water delivery driver, a mortar unit soldier, a rapid assault unit soldier, a 14-year-old pub janitor, an artist and a former member of parliament. Together, these people and places create an engaging mosaic of a day in the life of Ukraine.

The film is set in the early eighteenth century in the Carpathians. The cruel rule of the Polish gentry forces the Hutsuls to flee to the mountains. Two brothers, Oleksa and Ivan Dovbush, find themselves outlawed and become opryshky. In search of revenge on the lords for the murder of Dovbush's parents, the brothers become enemies to each other. One wants money, the other wants justice.

The Hutsuls start an uprising led by Oleksa. The nobility does everything possible to destroy Dovbush. But he outsmarts them. And the legend of the Carpathian knight grew. A legend that inspires generations of those who fight for the freedom of their native land. It is about the strength and love of Oleksa Dovbush, about betrayal and insult. About how he lived and how he deceived death.