The film portrays the life of the legendary Azerbaijani guerrilla of the Second World War Mehdi Huseynzadeh, who fought the Nazi forces in the present-day Italy and Slovenia, hence the film's name On distant shores referring to the Adriatic Sea.
This Azerbaijani romantic drama depicts the love affair between Zaur, a man from an affluent family, and Tahmina, a divorced woman doing her best to survive in a conservative society.
The investigator Seyfi Ganiyev runs the case of an illegal mercery shop's head Murad Abiyev, who confessed in embezzlement of one million rubles from public funds. Abiyev is also accused of the murder of an underage girls that occurred in Riga shortly after Abiyev saw her. He denies his guilt, but does not name the perpetrators though he knows them, despite the fact that he is facing the death penalty. The investigator understands that some high-ranking officials stand behind Abiyev, but he has no proof. Ganiyev seeks to obtain from the prisoner the whole truth to bring the criminals to justice.
After the novel of the same name of Yusif Samadoghlu. The film is about three intervals in time: the distant past, yesterday and today, about innocent victims, about repression, and conquest of different countries.
This lyrical psychological film is about true friendship. The characters in the film are contemporaries in of late 1970s Azerbaijan SSR with differing visions of the world, yet sharing true and lasting friendship.