A hard-working isolated community of Croatian shepherds spend their summers high up in the mountain Dinara. One summer evening, when the northern wind is so strong one cannot even think, a solitary woman whose language they do not understand approaches their houses from the dark. She was searching for them. She says her name is Teresa and she is the widow of their émigré brother, who died in a mining accident in Chile. They let her stay.
With time, Teresa starts slowly showing that she is tormented by a sense of immense guilt she is trying to stifle by desperately wanting to become one of them and live by their rules. Almost against her will, she strongly affects Ilija, the head of the community, passing on to him her own tangled desire and inner entropy.
The community rebels against him and accuses Teresa of changing him. In the end, she has to find the strength to liberate both of them physically and spiritually.