When Israel was created in 1948, Palestinian Samah emigrated to Syria. Her sister Zahra has not seen her since 62 years. Only now are they able to meet in Istanbul to end the longing that has subsumed their years apart. This is the story of the last 500 meters Samah has to walk to reach her sister, and how her interaction with the city prepares her for the ultimate reunion.
Middle aged intellectual couple Ana and Dragan are in Istanbul, first time in their life that they are on holliday abroad. During one fight, Ana loses her husband in the crowd. She tries to find him in the labyrinth of streets, but instead encounters someone she thought she had lost a long time ago. Her son Marco, who died during the war that ravaged the Balkans in the 90΄s, is standing in front of her. Could that really be him?
Young Bosnian Actress Alma has come to Istanbul to prepare for auditions of Othello. On one side she is dealing with the jealous and incessant phone calls of her lover, on the other she is trying to prepare the part in the trenty hotel he has booked for her. At some point of the evening she convinces hotel employee Ayca to help her. However Ayca΄s realistic approach to Shakespeare leads the rehearsal towards an unexpected direction and holds up an interesting mirror to Alma΄s life.
Armenak is a successful Oud player who is in Istanbul for the first time for an important musical event. His feelings towards the city, which his Armenian grandfather had to leave "at the tip of the sword" in 1915, are very complex. Armenak came full of prejudice, expecting to hate the place, but instead finds it very familiar. The decision comes naturally to him to search for his Grandfather΄s old musical instrument shop with only an old photo and a street name. Is it destiny or coincidence that leads him to his destination?
Vangelis has to frequently travel between Thessaloniki and Istanbul for business reasons, even if he has no desire to do so. Each time, instead of spending the night in Istanbul, he prefers to make the long round trip journey on the same day. He is a bitter man and Istanbul is of no interest to him. But on this occasion, following a fraud by the shopkeeper with whom he collaborates, he loses his money and has to stay overnight. While strugling to get his money back, he meets Zeynep. This unknown woman will help him recover his money and arouse unexpected feelings in him.
Fayez, a successful Palestinian writer living in London, has recently been in Israel to negotiate the adaptation of his latest novel to the screen with a film studio. There, he has met a young woman, Sherine, with whom he had an affair. But a relationship between an Israeli and a Palestinian is no easy thing in these territories, so the two agreed to meet in Istanbul for a romantic weekend. They start their holiday as two lovers who have missed each other but their differences also force their way to the furface. As they explore the city of Istanbul, they vacillate between fighting and tenderness. Fayez is hopeful that their physical attraction is stronger than their cultural and political differences, but what if Sherine is not the woman in love she pretends to be?
The famous Greek writer Petros Markaris left his native Istanbul in the 60΄s after turbulent political and social conflicts. Now he is back to the city and visiting all the places that mattered to him one by one. At the end of this little journey into his past he ends up in his old apartment where now lives the filmmaker Huseyin Karabey, with whom he had joined forces to realize this project.