In the port town of Trebolu, 65-year old Ayshe Ilives with her dying sister Selma, a day the fiercely devoted Ayshe dreads. Nonetheless, she befriends the neighbor′s son, Mehmet, telling him fantastic stories, making both happy for the distraction from their ordinary lives. When Selma dies, Mehmet shares Ayshe′s grief, but cannot understand her sudden plunge into solitude and utter silence. When the time comes for the villagers′ yearly pilgrimage to higher ground, she goes along, and it is there, gazing at the clouds - and partially inspired by Mehmet - that she recalls and reconciles her mysterious past and the brother she abandoned. Waiting for the Clouds tells the little known story of ethnic cleansing by the Turkish Ottoman Army during the First World War through the secretly Greek Ayshe. At the time, thousands of ethnic Greeks were forced onto deadly marches out of the country, leaving a legacy of mistrust and suspicion that was alive and well in the 1970s. The film raises questions of identity, nationalism and homeland that are the result of the nationalistic fervor of both times.