As high school students put on a politically-engaged school play, tensions begin to rise between them and their headmaster. The conflict seems to mirror the social situation in the 1980s Poland.
When a political decision is made as to the location of a new large chemical factory, Stefan Bednarz is put in charge of it. This honest communist party man has to confront the local community opposing the construction.
Krzysztof Zanussi's groundbreaking film chronicles a decade in the life of a young physics student whose absolute faith in the primacy of rationality and science is shaken by tragedy and affairs of the heart.
