Returning to Turkey from exile in the West the secular poet Ka is driven by curiosity to investigate a surprising wave of suicides among religious girls forbidden by the government to wear their head scarves in school. But the epicentre of the suicides the bleak impoverished border city of Kars is also home to the beautiful Ipek a friend of Kas youth whom he has never forgotten & whose spirited younger sister is a leader of the rebellious schoolgirls. As a fierce snowstorm descends cutting them off from the world violence between the military & local Islamic radicals begins to explode & Ka finds his sympathies drawn in unexpected & dramatic directions.