The film unfolds along two interconnected storylines; the events take place in the second half of the 19th century in the Russian Empire (1872–1875) and in the early 20th century during the
Russo-Japanese War in China (1904). It begins thirty years after the tragic death of Anna Karenina, on the battlefields of the Russo-Japanese War — a setting not described in Tolstoy's novel. The main narrative is set in 1904. Heavy fighting rages in
Manchuria. A field hospital is shown being evacuated in the midst of a hasty Russian retreat. Amid the chaos, the chief doctor and the hospital superintendent go missing; a young doctor, Sergey Alexeyevich Karenin, is the only man qualified to replace them both. In a semi-abandoned Chinese village where the hospital has been relocated after the retreat, Karenin completes a risky operation to save the life of a wounded colonel - Count Alexey Kirillovich Vronsky. That night, Sergey visits Vronsky’s ward and asks him to explain why his mother Anna — whom the count had known thirty years earlier — threw herself under a train, and whether anything could have changed the course of that fateful day. Although the aged Vronsky cautions Sergey that every person has their own truth, he agrees to recount the story of his and Anna's love, and in the process confronts his own lingering guilt over her disgrace and death. ==Cast==