Piano player is commissioned as an officer in WW1 Austro-Hungarian army. His sensitive soul is being tormented by war atrocities. And then he is ordered to hang an old lady...
It is 1918, the evening of The Great War. Austro-Hungarian empire is collapsing, and all around Croatia there are outlaw deserters, fighting in forests. A city journalist decides to become a country schoolteacher, just to find some peace in that restless political situation. But, neither the village is safe from the militaristic policy of the imperial goverment.
The father dreams that at least his son Grga will return from Germany to his homeland because his second son is an employed Party member, lives in the city, and tries to push through some new projects in his village which traditional environment is opposed to.
Despite the ongoing WW2, most of the people were just minding their own business. But everything changes when police arrests the group of youths under suspicion of being resistance sympathizers. Outraged townsfolk organize the siege of police station.
The story of a girl who works in a foundry and leaves the job due to difficult working conditions and decides to go away from home. On this quest for happiness she meets a rich football manager whom she robs, as well as number of other people who all mostly have sexual or other intentions about her.
After getting into conflict with the head of the construction company, the party secretary and even majority of his fellow workers who took the management’s side, Perisa writes a letter to the Central Committee asking for his labor rights. Just before the arrival of the press, an accident occurs.
With WWI finally ending in 1918, Croatian journalist Kresimir Horvat travels from Zagreb to his village of Vucjak in Zagorje and becomes a witness of history as Austria-Hungarian Empire dissolves.