The film is about 17 year old Eva and 7 year old Lilu, a sister and brother living in Bucharest during the final years of the communist regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu. After Eva is expelled from her high school for her uncooperative attitude, she is sent to a technical school where she meets Andrei, with whom she plans to escape communist Romania by swimming across the Danube into Yugoslavia and relocating to Italy. Lilu and his friends, meanwhile, volunteer for a children's choir scheduled to sing for Ceauşescu, hoping this will give them a chance to assassinate the dictator.