Over twenty years after Lily and Nira were raped by the same serial rapist, an unexpected encounter brings them together. Single mother Nira, a reserved television editor, comes across charismatic Lily, a left-wing activist who is helping Palestinians harvest their olives. So intense is the chance meeting, that Nira finds herself digging into her past, stirring up memories, and trying to bridge the gap between the person she once was and the person she has become. Nira becomes increasingly obsessed with her 'mission' to find out all she can about the rapist. She discovers that although he behaved violently towards all the women, the press named him the Polite Rapist and described him as "well-mannered" since he forced his victims to spend hours with him, talking to them and raping them in turn. Lily, bound up in a profound crisis in her marriage, tries to prevent the trauma from surfacing, but it penetrates every part of her life.