Since the end of the civil war in the early 1990s, the region of Abkhazia has been acting independently of Georgia. This has turned a massive dam into a border. But the hydroelectric power station also connects the two political entities: Because over a distance of fifteen kilometres the water flows freely, underground, from one side to the other. When a young journalist gets stranded here, stories of division emerge.

On the way back from a reportage trip to the dam, director Maradia and her cameraman’s car breaks down. Ika takes care of them. For decades, the joyous engineer has worked – in cooperation with his colleagues on the Abkhazian territory – on the maintenance of the plant. Maradia, representative of a whole generation of Georgians who know this place of longing on the Black Sea only from stories, becomes curious. But while the workers take the bus across the border every morning, the film crew is thwarted by bureaucracy. Time and again they are denied passage. This turns out to be fortunate for the film, because waiting for the permission, in the cafeteria of the dam, in drives around the river, the stories of people emerge whose lives are shaped by the secession. They talk of legal and clandestine border crossings, weddings and funerals and of life in the here and there.

A mud volcano in Akhtala, Georgia, constantly produces material for the local spa industry: Heated and spread on large linen cloths, the shimmering grey goo is believed to heal the sick. But not only the guests roam the bathhouse, but also five-year-old Tako in her summer dress, who is afraid of the so-called Mud Man. The place and its volcano are shrouded in legends – how much truth is behind them? Tako discusses this and other things with her grandmother, whose job it is to wash the used linen cloths and hang them up to dry in the sun. Together they animate this unadorned post-Soviet era building filled with constant spluttering and dripping, while a blubbering sound seems to be coming from the mud pit. Is the mud really whispering?