Josef Konzal

The last winter of the Second World War in the Beskids. To escape the bombing, eight-year-old Dagmar is taken by her mother from Prague to a mountain village. From there, they take the narrow-gauge railroad to school...

"Everybody needs to feel that they belong to someone - and that's what our little František can give..." These are the words of childless Věra, who, together with her husband Karel, decides to take in an abandoned boy from an orphanage. The couple have tried many things in their lives: studying, finding a job. But none of these have fully satisfied them. But they have managed to create a home for themselves and now they want to offer it to a third child... Vera and her parents are delighted with the boy, who is still only a trial. But Karel, who himself lives with a sense of failure in his life, is finding it difficult and slow to adjust to the new member of the family...

Albrechtice near Jablonec. Sixteen-year-old Pavlínka Linková lives with her grandmother Barbara, a local midwife who raised her after the death of the girl's parents. The charming girl experiences her first amorous outburst towards Pavel Žák, a young textile worker in nearby Svárovo. Her grandmother, however, prevents her from contacting Pavel in every possible way. Firstly, as a midwife, she knows well what can happen, and secondly, she remembers her old adventures well. Love, however, cannot be ordered around, especially not by a worried grandmother. But there are other obstacles. The textile workers of Svárovo are planning a strike and a demonstration against redundancies and wage cuts, and the factory director is preparing a vigorous response. The year is 1870 and the unsuspecting Pavlina finds herself in the middle of events that will go down in history...