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Tatarstan, Russia, a small Tatar village. An old woman, Bibinur Juhangir, sees a dream telling that she is going to die next Friday. She has to use the time rest to give all of her debts and to prepare for the departure. Suddenly criminal businessmen and land owners appear in the village. They are intending to sell the land, where now the old cemetery is. One of them, Jihangir, who is used to glamorous life of big cities having lived the most part of his life abroad, has now for the first time in his life arrived on Tartar land. The young man stays in Bibinur's house for the night, and she tells him about her life. She's ready to confront his companion and refuses to sell the land.

The story of "The 823rd kilometer" is based on the prose of the classic of Tatar literature Amirkhan Yeniki, namely on three of his short stories: "Beauty", "Who Sang" and "For only one hour". The main character of the film is a writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, who has been living in Europe for many years. The writer's terminal illness forces him and his wife to come home to see the place where their family's roots come from for the last time. They meet with their only son, a successful director, a "citizen of the world." The complicated relationship between father and son is set off by touching stories: ?- about two Shakir boys (madrasah students) - 1908; ?- about a lieutenant dying on an ambulance train, who hears the shrill voice of his beloved singing a song through his delirium - 1941; - about the son who was able to visit his native home for just one hour before being sent to the front in 1943. And all these stories, and the modern one created by the screenwriter, and written by Amirkhan Yeniki, converge at one point - the 823rd kilometer, a place of power for all generations of this family.