A young man is taking hard his parents divorce and constant absence, so he decides to work on a hydro dam project. Here he finds some relatives that serve as a family.
A harsh colonel of paratroopers neglects his family after falling in love with a chess player, the sister of one of his paratroopers that got injured because of the jumping punishment given by him.
Dying in the trenches during World War II, Stefan looks back at his own life and that of his father. Through his memories, the film presents a story that embraces two generations and various eras. It is a film about the tragedy of lives dragged into conflicts against their will, of lives violently ruined or ended – a story about the devastating consequences of war. Interweaving past and present, the flashback narrative depicts the war as a perpetual situation where the „little people” always turn out to be on the losing side.