A lonely man wanders the streets of contemporary Warsaw. He reads the daily press, observes women in a beauty salon and follows the action on a film set. In each of the places he is just an observer, not a protagonist.
This film records the struggle for life within the Arctic Circle. It reveals flowers of startling beauty, whose entire life cycles last less than thirty days, and strange animals like the shaggy musk-ox, the shy lemming, and migrant water birds that survive in a land of vast deserts and almost perpetual cold.
When a ship bringing a contingent of international wounded from Korea is torpedoed, three women (two nurses and a secretary) and a male journalist survive and reach a lonely island in a boat.