Paul Vasiliu, a geologist, returns to his native village. Excavating for irrigation works gives him the opportunity to discover some valuable minerals. Now he has to convince the villagers to postpone theirs lifelong dream of having irrigations in their fields to examine if the mineral deposits are economically viable. A common communist propaganda item of those times.
In the early 19th century the Romanian Theodor Diamant was inspired by the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier and established one of Fourier's "phalansteries" in Rumania. The film dramatizes the origins and demise of this effort, called the "Scaieni Phalanstery (the term is derived from "phalanx" and "monastery"). Among the socio-political commentary that is conveyed throughout, there is an important collusion between the army and the wealthy landowners of the time, and as the film points out in its own way, neither of these groups has ever been convicted of socialist/utopian tendencies.
