Andrea Baković

It is 1945 in Zagreb, and everyone is settling into the new regime following the disturbances of the war. Matilda is a wealthy widow of a war hero and has an apartment so spacious that she is required to take a boarder. Fortunately for her, the handsome young Lt. Horvat, the communist housing officer, has taken a fancy to her and has assigned his fiancee to be Matilda's new roommate. Where Matilda is soft and rounded, Lilijana is hard, skinny, and given to revolutionary pronouncements rather than tender endearments. The lieutenant loves them both, though he naturally finds Matilda more attractive. His situation is simplified when Lilijana, though pregnant, is transferred to another post. However, his commander is horrified that he has a lover in addition to his fiancee and demands that he choose whether to continue his career or continue his affair.

The seemingly pleasant life of Marija and her son Darko is broken when their village is attacked by the Serbian chetniks, forcing them to evacuate and look for new living and employment opportunites in the nearby city, with the former taking a job in the washroom of the local hospital and the latter, against his mother's wishes, deciding to join the Croatian Army. A few weeks later, Marija recieves the news of her son's passing and decides to head into no man's land to retrieve his remains and bury them in the village they both grew up in.