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.

Gypsies steal a large shipment of drugs worth $40,000,000 from the mafia and kill a drug courier. In response, the bandits kidnap the daughter of the gypsy baron Alan, little Rose, and forcibly put her on a needle. Alan's revenge is inevitable and merciless. But will he be able to get to the godfather of the drug syndicate Victor.

A lonely, defenseless, unsettled man meets a beautiful gypsy woman and falls in love with her. Having left the service, having left home, he sticks to the camp, but even here he finds neither home nor love — only pity. So he remains a "gadjo" for everyone, a stranger.

For more than six months, Budulay, who had been brutally beaten by gangsters, had no memory. A chance encounter with his son Vanya, who had learned from his mother that his real father was Budulay, restored the boy's memory.