István O. Szabó

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 the tragic autumn of 1944, the possibility of liberation from the war and the chains of the German alliance flashes before our eyes. Lacking leadership, in the first few hours people cannot yet know that their hopes are dashed, and they prepare the country not for celebration, but for burial. Some of the soldiers defect to the advancing Soviet forces, while others reload their weapons. A small group chooses a third path: they flee the front and try to fight their way home through adventurous journeys and encounters.

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.