One-year-old Ani is burning with a fever, and her mother doesn’t have a thermometer or any medicine to relieve her daughter’s suffering. Ani has a fever, but they can’t take her temperature and there are no medications at home. There is only one way out: to call an ambulance or wait for the neighbors to wake up and ask them for fever-reducing medication.

“You have cancer!” – A young mother of three almost died on the spot when she heard those words. What would happen to her children? What would happen to her sick mother? Until that day Ekaterina had been the only support for everyone, she had worked, taken care of her home and her children, and her old sick parents… and suddenly one word shattered everything!

“It’s been 12 years that I’ve been fighting for my son’s life; it’s been 12 years that a ‘stone of sadness’ has been weighing on my heart, getting heavier every day…” – So says the mother of little Saba, who has had cerebral palsy, epilepsy and mental retardation since birth.

It’s total darkness around her. 89-year-old, lonely Clara cannot open her eyes. She sits by the table and waits for someone to come in and carry her to her bed. She cannot navigate in the darkness without help. She can’t find her bed, which is quite close by, but she doesn’t understand how to get to it. She is lost. She sits and waits.

21-year-old Luka is an eternal child for his single mom Irina. Irina got used to it and even thanks God that she had a chance to be Luka’s mother. When he was born, “good people” advised her to leave him right in the maternity hospital and forget about him… “You condemn yourself to eternal torment,” they said, but Irina was ready for all the trials, just to be together with her son!

Andria puts his hand into a grater and grates it like a vegetable until scratches with blood appear, then he bites his both hands hard. This closet, where he and his sister are locked up all day, while their mother Tea is at work, infuriates him. Ana watches all day long as her brother sways from side to side and bites his hands. There is a strong smell of urine in the room, because 12-year-old Andria has run out of diapers.