The film is told in a flashback format with Gage, now living in the United States, returning to his native Greece to solve the mystery of his mother's death when he was a child. The film looks back to the effect of the 1940s Greek Civil War in Lia – the remote Greek village of Gage's upbringing in the northwestern Greek region of Epirus; and in particular, the murder of his mother by communistguerrillas of the
Democratic Army of Greece (ΔΣΕ).