Acclimatization

11-year-old Ayaz moves with his mother from Baku to Dagestan, where he is haunted by the Phantom of his father, who recently died in Nagorno-Karabakh. Having fallen under the influence of a local gang of Azerbaijanis, Ayaz is forced to choose between friendship with his Armenian friends and loyalty to the street’s code of honor. When Ayaz’s mother gets close to her Armenian neighbor Nikol, Ayaz, overcome with jealousy, commits a series of cruel acts – with the support of the gang. The situation escalates to the extreme when Azerbaijanis decide to set fire to Nikol’s house, endangering not only his property, but also the life of his daughter Ana, a girl with whom Ayaz is secretly in love. At the crucial moment, he saves Ana from the fire, and then finds the courage to confess to arson, protecting the innocent Nikol from the angry villagers. Ayaz accepts Nikol as a stepfather and forever says goodbye to the Phantom, which he no longer needs as a protective mechanism of his psyche.