Konstantin Iliev

Captain Lipovanski is badly wounded during World War II. The Germans take him prisoner. After the end of the war, he is set free in a foreign country. He has been deceived that he was sentenced to death as a deserter and that his pregnant wife had died in a Bulgarian concentration camp. He trains for subversive activities against his own country. He is given the codename 'Golden Tooth'. Eager for revenge, he arrives in Bulgaria. There he learns that an agent provocateur has killed his wife, that his child is safe and has been raised in a nursery, and that he himself is respected as a hero. Golden Tooth sets out to eliminate his accomplices. With a file containing valuable documents, the traitors prepare their escape abroad. The spies are caught at the border. Golden Tooth kills the last of the traitors and dies driving his lorry into a precipice.

Gaffer Yordan the Gerak is a wealthy farmer with a large family. The Geraks live in harmony as long as his wife is alive. After her death, disagreement and strife erupt among them. Two of the sons, Bozhan and Peter, demand the partition of their father's real estate. The third son, Pavel, who is doing his military service in the town, has become estranged from the land and from his family. When Pavel returns home only to ask money from his father, Gaffer Yordan discovers that he has been robbed. His sons trade accusations and come to blows. Pavel goes back to his mistress in the city. Elka, Pavel's wife, falls ill with a venereal disease she has contracted from his husband. On a dark and stormy night Elka is about to drown herself in the river when the Gerak's old farmhand takes her back home. Before long, Elka dies, as does Gaffer Yordan. Bozhan fells the centenarian pine tree in the yard of the family home, which symbolized the patriarchal ways of the Geraks.

Captain Velkov was sent chief of a border post near the village of Novi Izvor, where he was a partisan. In Novi Izvor a celebration is being prepared to mark the switching on of the electricity. Saboteurs cut the cables, killed the watchman and set fire to the machinery on the farm.