This colourful, music-filled and sensual melodrama based on early stories by Maxim Gorky tells the fatal love story between the beautiful and rebellious girl Rada and the handsome horse thief Zobar. The story is set in early 20th century Bessarabia, now part of Moldova, then belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The stories of three men get tangled up in the life of the young Gipsy called Magdalena - that of the Bulgarian Lilyanin, who starts off as a fighter for brotherhood but turns into a persecutor of the Gypsies; the story of the savage Halibryamov, who knows the language of animals, but does not speak any human tongue; the story of a rich Gypsy called Kanyo who wants but does not dare to break with the lot of his kin, and story of a Frenchman in a wheelchair who comes to realize that money cannot buy everything. Magic alone can unravel this knot of destinies... And then, there is the Gypsy tale of the black swallow and how it came to be.

Lola is a young gypsy of uncertain origin who was adopted, as a newborn, by a family among whom she has grown up with gypsy customs and traditions. When the young woman finishes high school, she considers, against her family and her social environment, to continue her studies and pursue a teaching career. At that moment of his adolescent life, love appears when he meets Juan, a gypsy of his age.