A man destroyed by guilt and driven to the most extreme spiritual exhaustion sets out on his eternal quest for redemption. In 1942, a hysterical Russian soldier is forced by the Nazis to shoot his Captain before he himself is left for dead. The soldier survives, however, when he is rescued by monks. Thirty-four years later he is a notorious holy man and healer going by the name of Father Anatoly. He has spent the intervening years on the monks' tiny outpost, shoveling coal on his island as he did in the war, doomed to this Sisyphean task forever. Desperate and suffering people come from all around to seek him out; not only for blessings and guidance but also for his mystical powers to see the future and heal the sick. But Anatoly is haunted by his sin. Scarred by the murder he committed, the damaged, weathered old man is in a state of constant prayer, begging God for forgiveness while punishing his aged body with demanding physical labour. Then one day a cosmopolitan Admiral and his deranged daughter arrive from afar, and everything Anatoly thought that he understood about faith is torn asunder.