On a festive spring day in 1940, two young quan họ singers fall in love. But their relationship is soon ruthlessly disrupted by class injustices, imposed upon both—and many other Vietnamese—by the ongoing French colonial rule and the looming Japanese occupation.

A young girl searches for her father, a soldier in the PAVN, after her mother and sister are killed during Christmas Bombings.

On the way to evacuation, a young woman falls in love with a kind stranger who helps her family and promises to marry him when they meet again one day. This is the first Vietnamese feature film to use synchronised sound recording and was also the 1953 box office hit.