Masked figures with machine guns march into the secondary school in Karatas, take the pupils hostage, and execute one of them. They make no demands. Silent terror is their modus operandi. Seeing as the army will take two days to arrive due to a snowstorm, maths teacher Tazshi decides to assemble his own assault team: his ex-wife, the gym teacher, the cowardly school principal, an alcoholic night watchman, the village idiot, and an incompetent chief of police.
What follows is no traditional action film, but a thriller with snatches of comedy, in which the enemy isn’t hidden behind masks, but is in the minds of the liberators. Before they act, they have to overcome their personal demons. Comparisons to the school hostage-takings in Beslan and Kazan are obvious, yet Karatas – the mythical village where much of director Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s work is set – could be anywhere. It is universally acknowledged that crises bring out people's true natures.
