During the 1990s, an unnamed protagonist lives with his dying mother and elderly father in the Sarajevo neighborhood of Dobrinja. One seemingly ordinary day in 1992, the Serbian siege of the city begins and he ends up being trapped within the confines of the neighborhood of Grbavica, where he hides away from the enemy forces and artillery fire in a small apartment owned by his family. During his stay in Grbavica, he quickly bonds with a young man he calls The Musician and falls in love with a young woman whose forced to prostitute herself in order to be able to provide care for her ailing grandmother.