In 1956, a crusading newspaper reporter covers the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Initially critical of the communists, the feature later espouses the virtues of social changes implemented since the invasion.

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.

A new teacher arrives at the secondary grammar school. The girls are all crazy for the handsome, blonde young man, except for the most excellent pupil, Balázs Ági. Yet Pali starts paying his attentions to no one else but her.

In 1918, Fábián Bálint is forced to kill on the Italian front. At home, his sons drown the priest, the lover of their mother, in the river Kraszna, an action that drives her insane. Following his return home, Bálint becomes the liveried coachman of the baron.

In 1944 Budapest, a watchmaker, a book seller and a carpenter are drinking in a bar with the owner, when they are joined by a stranger. The watchmaker poses a hypothetical that will change their lives forever.

The head of the nunnery is dying, and the members are divided in two groups as the election of the new head approaches. Led by Virginia, the younger nuns stand up for changing the strict religious dogmas and would like a modern school with genuine science, a bathroom to be built, and a freer spirit. Their candidate is sister Magdolna, who went to secular universities, too. The seminarists, led by Király Erzsi, also rebel against the older nuns' strict discipline and the depressed atmosphere of the institution. However, Magdolna does not want to stay involved in the fight because she is deterred by Virginia's sinful attraction towards her and the tools Virginia is using to gain victory at any price.

Against the backdrop of the Adolph Eichmann trials, an elderly paraplegic pharmacist is summoned to the police station, where he believes that his hidden wartime guilt has caught up with him, unaware that it is all in fact an elaborate practical joke.

20-year-old Gida, having just survived his first amourous disappointment, falls for Katinka, the young widow, at first sight.

To celebrate Hitler's birthday, a soccer match is organised between the Germans and a group of Hungarian political prisoners, one of whom is a famous pre-war football star.

In 1930s Hungary, budding aristocrat Lőrinc Parcen Nagy undergoes a moral awakening. He abandons his privileged life to join the socialist underground, facing the harsh realities of class struggle and the approach of WWII.

A murder took place in 1961, a middle-aged man, father of a family, Dávid Sajgó, was found dead in his village gate in the morning. During the police investigation it was established that the murdered man had visited Anna Töre in the village the previous evening, had besieged her with a love proposal and had repeatedly proposed marriage. Anna Töre, who was a good-looking woman, had raised three children alone, by three different fathers, and was considered an eccentric in the community. She was suspected in the death.

When a Latin teacher publishes an essay on the Carthaginian General Hannibal, he is quickly hailed as a celebrity genius, but in reality has become an unwitting pawn of far-right politicians.

In the vocational school the professionally excellent Dani János works on his own invention in his leisure time, but he does not like learning. However, even his own father learns in the evenings, he will become a teacher.

A group of landless Hungarian peasants accept work as migrant-labourers on a northern German farm where the wages are good, and the wives and family are allowed to accompany them. Though in the midst of WWII, they are relatively well-off. However, as they witness the treatment accorded to POWs and others not so gently regarded, and at the conclusion of the year's harvest, they choose to return to Hungary and are quickly swept up in the tides of war.

During a mining accident, the police arrest the sole survivor on suspicion of murder, whose pickaxe is stained with the blood of one of the victims. The investigation reveals that the identity card found on the victim belongs to another person, that the collapse was deliberate and that the miner believed to be the victim has escaped.

War criminal Baradla Géza returns after 25 years, alongside his ex-accomplice, Obrád Simon, to the village where he burned occupied homes and executed partisans. The ex squad-leader is chased to this place by his 'heroic deed' and the memory of his love. Like a maniac, he seeks to forgive the villagers for having killed six of his soldiers.