Viktória Ujváry

Dismissed from the railroads in 1863 for his union activities, Etienne Lantier found a job at the Voreux coal mine. But work was hard, wages were low and safety left much to be desired. Lantier tried to organize the miners into a union. When mine manager Hennebeau refused to negotiate, the workers launched a general strike, which ended with the intervention of the troops.

In a rural scenery in the throes of difficult changes lives a humble but promising young farmer girl called Mari Pataki. Her father forbids her from seeing the man she loves. The father, above all preoccupied by work on the fields and prospective wealth, decides to give his daughter in marriage to an old but rich man with whom he does business. Land marries land, he says. This seems to be the unyielding rule of the Hungarian peasantry. But the young lover is ready to stand up to any challenge to keep Maris love.

In May 1919 in a small rural town beside Salgótarján the local high society wants to get the power back with the leadership of dr. Máriáss, exploiting the outside attack launched against the Republic of Councils.

On New Year's Eve in 1956 the artist couple, the actor János and the dancer Viki are hastily packing. While they are waiting for the car, which is to take them across the border, their entire life is replayed in front of their eyes.

In 1963 in Tihany, somebody addresses the writer Gábor Náday. He is reminded of a night drive in 1944 that saved his life. Painful memories start coming to Náday.

Mihai Toth worked for forty years as a watchman in a timber warehouse. On his last watch, there was a fire: the warehouse burned to the ground. The damage amounted to one and a half million forints. It was a terrible blow to Mihai, who had worked honestly all his life. Suddenly it turns out that Mihai has won one and a half million forints in a lottery. Wanting to save his good name, he wants to deposit this sum in the state treasury. But it turned out to be not so easy: the cause of the fire has not been established and Mihai's guilt has not been proved. That's why nobody had the right to take money from him. For a long time Mihai wandered from one institution to another with a request to accept money from him, but everything was in vain. Then the old man tried a trick...

A heavily indebted schoolteacher raising two marriageable daughters is buoyed by rumors that his long-lost uncle in America is a millionaire, until the uncle’s unexpected arrival in poverty sparks a rush of creditors, patrons and fortune-seekers. Ambitious lawyer Jenő Szekeres orchestrates the deception so that the family, the town and himself profit from the false fortune, and even when the truth comes out, everyone, including Szekeres, now eyeing a political career, chooses to uphold the lie.