Miroslav Olejníček

The happenings in a shoe factory serve as a not very thinly veiled examination of the pros and cons of both socialism and democracy.

Young Jan Stehlík signs up for a job to build a new mine. On the train he meets the pretty Alena, who falls in love with him. However, she means nothing to the superficial Jan, and when the girl becomes his lover, he treats her rudely and insultingly. But Alena's relationship troubles the honest Joseph, who really likes her.

The leader of the fast-track workers' party is appointed worker director of the unprofitable Lucie mine. The wrong decisions he makes to increase production at any cost and to fulfil an unrealistic plan lead to a catastrophe in which his son is accidentally killed. After overwhelming criticism, the failed director wants to quit, but the senior management and party authorities continue to have faith in him...

In southern Moravia, in the native village of Velka Samota, a ministry official returns from Prague to lift the declining JZD he helped establish.

In the early 1970s, the class struggle flared up in full force on the big screen - the hero of this film, set in the interwar period, is a staunch communist journalist who arrives in the Ostrava region during the economic crisis to instigate a strike. The impoverishment and hopelessness of the miners had exceeded all limits...