Vladlena was born in Crimea in 1982. After her parents’ divorce, at the age of six, she moved to her mother’s homeland in Grozny, where she began first grade. The Soviet Union collapsed. Crimea, where her father remained, became part of Ukraine. Suddenly, her Russian-speaking classmates and friends began leaving the Chechen Republic—part of a resurgence of national conflict rooted in the deportation of native Chechens to Kazakhstan in 1944. Chechens returned to the republic en masse. In 1992, an armed conflict erupted and quickly escalated. Her Russian neighbours were murdered, and her family’s lives came under threat. In 1994, military operations began in Grozny. Vladlena’s grandfather died. Her mother was wounded and left disabled. Eventually, the family came under armed attack. Vladlena managed to escape. In 1998, she was granted displaced person status in Russia. The experience of war left deep psychological scars, leading to PTSD. In this autobiographical film, Vladlena draws on childhood memories, surviving family archives, historical artefacts, and personal trauma to seek an answer to a haunting question: why did her family choose to remain in a war zone?