When the witty old lady Aniela finally gets rid of her last lodger, she thinks it's finally time for her to feel at home in her beautiful old wooden house. But her greedy son and neighbours have other plans.
Aniela, is as much a sprightly, unyielding relic of the past as the big dacha-style house surrounded by tall trees in which she lives alone with her impetuous dog, Philadelphia. Across the way, she disapprovingly observes a boorish fat nouveau-riche man in a big new house, and over in a corner, a shabbier building occupied by a struggling music school, everybody wants Aniela's house or her land. When nouveau-riche neighbors, aided by her cold-hearted son, conspire to gain her property, she finds a way to outsmart them.
