The film is set in Transylvania in the 1920s, a region that was then part of Romania under the peace treaties following the First World War. The protagonist, Abel, is a resourceful teenage boy who is forced to leave his parents and his home because of poverty. His father accompanies him to the snowy mountains, where he is the guardian of a forest owned by the bank of a neighbouring town, where he oversees the firewood that is being harvested. Up there, he has only himself to rely on. Áron Tamási's beautiful story is about the relationship between man and nature, man and man.