Respublika, an opposition newspaper in Kazakhstan, has been publishing against the government's wishes since the country's 1991 independence, and the film follows what that costs its staff. Offices have been firebombed, reporters beaten, kidnapped, imprisoned, and exiled, yet the paper keeps printing as one of the few dissenting voices left in the country. The camera stays close to journalist Zhanara as she works out of Almaty, chasing leads and pushing stories past editors and censors who know the risks better than she does. The film's centerpiece is her coverage of the Zhanaozen riots, where oil workers' protests ended in what the film calls the bloodiest day in Kazakhstan's modern history, and she travels to the aftermath to report what state media will not. There is no narrator smoothing over the danger; the newsroom's daily routine, threats included, is left to speak for itself. It is a plain record of what it takes to keep a newspaper alive when the state would rather it disappeared.