After his first day at school 6 year old Hugo doesn't want to continue to go to this "institution". He appeals to God to become a grown up, who fulfills his wish and lets him experience life as an adult in the body of his father, a police physician. When Hugo falls under suspicion of having failed in his profession he again turns to God.
In this well-photographed and sometimes confusing wartime drama, an Austrian village experiences the tragedy of war on several different levels. Within one family, the younger son is jealous of the praise his father gives to a Polish POW who is working for them under very difficult conditions. Within the village as a whole, the French, Polish, and Russian POWs are kept under guard by Nazi soldiers, creating a tense situation all around. But more importantly, the village has conspired to hide an Austrian deserter in a cave up in the mountains. This act of rebellion on the part of the deserter and the village hangs in a precarious balance that could be upset by a single traitorous comment to the Gestapo.
Elisabeth, a forty year old woman, visits her old father in the outskirts of Klagenfurt. There, she reflects about her childhood and her romantic life.
