The film tells the story of the pioneers of Ukrainian modernism, fugitives from the deadly regime of the USSR. The group was founded in the early 1950s in New York where its poets worked alongside the Beatniks. Because Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union in those years, writing such poetry there would have surely resulted in severe repression from the KGB. However, the free world offered these poets an opportunity to build and develop their own language and bring their literature to an international level.