»Petrunya, an everyday woman, has the force to change something, to make a change for all of us together.«
– Teona Strugar Mitevska

»Tell them you’re 24!«, Petrunya’s mother tells her as she heads off to another job interview. Petrunya is 31 and has a first-class degree in history. But who needs a historian in her home town of Štip in Macedonia, 100 kilometres southeast of Skopje? So there she sits opposite a potential employer, a factory owner who looks at her flowery dress condescendingly and refuses to take her seriously. On the way home − of course she didn’t get the job − Petrunya takes the plunge. It’s Epiphany day, and like every year, the young men of the city dive into the icy river to retrieve a wooden cross thrown in by the priest. But this time Petrunya is faster than anyone else and ends up holding the trophy for the TV cameras. She will defend the cross, for a day and a night, despite great public commotion and the indignation of the town’s entire male population.

Teona Strugar Mitevska delivers an angry yet melancholic satire that questions the state of democratic change in Macedonian society and passes scathing judgment on representatives of the Church, judiciary and the media. The film’s sympathy lies with the resolute young woman who defies archaic traditions and paralysing opportunism.