During the peasant uprising of 1888, Alecu Dumitru, a socialist, hides from police in the Nada Florilor island, next to a fishing village.

A love stoyi between two strangers that meet by chance when they are forced by a snowstorm to take refuge in an isolated house in the mountains.

After he fails to be accepted in college, Vali is questioned by police for participating in various thefts. He needs an alibi and he thinks the best one would be his father in Bucharest. To get there, he steals a motorcycle. In Bucharest he meets store clerk Anișoara, and he invites her to a seaside escapade. Their one day of love and future optimism is ended abruptly by a tragic motorcycle accident.

Fifteen years later, Viișoara has not changed much: the shepherd remains the same lonely character, Varvara the same energetic woman caught in complicated administrative tasks, Toderaș with his palinca hidden in the barn and his fading authority, elders wise and active, young people enthusiastic—but not all of them.

Two friends, closer than brothers, working together, staying in the same room, playing together.

A border town on the Danube, 1944. The town is occupied by the Germans, and there are plenty of collaborators. A number of the young men join the partisans, kill a Serbian, and throw his body into the village, forbidding anyone to bury it. Anastasia refuses to obey the order…