Acting
Kiss, an engineer, accompanies his wife to the maternity ward. He wants to leave the woman because while he was away in Brazil, she did not undergo an abortion as they had agreed before. While he is packing up at home, the memories of the sweet events of their life together keep coming to him, one after the other.
In a rural scenery in the throes of difficult changes lives humble but promising young farmer girl 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 his older business partner. 'Land marries land', he says, a phrase which seems to be the unyielding rule of the Hungarian peasantry. But the younger lover is ready to confront any challenge to keep Mari's love.
The story takes place in the Stalinist camps of the 1930s, where the main character, Gleb Nesterov, is trying to escape while they are starving and have no idea who has been captured or why. There is no trace of logic in the camp, although the engineer is obsessed with researching it, as it should be. From one day to the next, Professor Adrián is also captured and interrogated, and they want to extort a confession from him while humiliating him. Moral laws and norms have disappeared here, there is only humiliation, death and starvation.
Peti, the young parachutist starts concurring with his fellows during the training sessions: who dares to fall free longer? Orodán, his coach decides that if needed, he would use force to make him give up this perilous rowdiness.
In the aftermath of World War II, a Hungarian teenager, captured by Soviet troops, forms an unlikely bond with a Russian soldier in a remote prison camp.
Hungary, 1950s. József Pelikán, who works as a dam keeper on the Danube, meets by chance Zoltán Dániel, an old friend whom he saved from death years before and who is now a powerful politician.
Savanyú and his friend work at a plant. After the monotonous shifts they engage in the pleasures of the afternoon and the night, i.e. parties and concerts. Savanyú dates Juli, they are already engaged. The young men live as sub-tenants, the young women in workers' hostels. None of these places are suited for spending time together. They are in need of an apartment. Out of the ruinous apartment which they lay siege on, however, they are sent away by the otherwise friendly policeman. At a concert held in the Park of Youth, Juli gets to know Géza. They flirt, then go to the country with a pop-group. Savanyú and his friends follow them. A minor fight cools the atmosphere.
Laci is facing maturation and he wants to work, but his intellectual parents want him to be at the university. Laci feels lonely, because back home the centre is his younger brother and he also deceived in Zsuzsa, his class mate. The girl is already an accomplished pop singer, member of the Illés, and she only returns the love of Laci as a friend. But through Zsuzsa he can meet the members of the well-established group, whose members even lend him their instruments for the concert of the school group. They also play together and another brown girl cheers him already.
Végh Márta, the teacher is looking for her student Vadász Ica in the Buda villa, but she only finds the tenant, Mrs. Paár - dead. The investigation reveals that Mrs. Paár was murdered for an invaluable stamp, the "Fake Isabella".
In the streets of Vichy, France, during World War II, the Germans apprehend nine men and a boy. Among them are a painter, a businessman, an electrician, a waiter, an army doctor, an actor, a prince, a gypsy, and a Jew. Confined without explanation, they can only speculate about their fate.
