Two zootechnics students, Jacek and Marek, come to the Bieszczady (it's the Polish "Wild West"). Looking for a holiday adventure and income, they become "cowboys" on local cattle grazing. Instead of the expected romantic adventures and the male, hard life, their boredom is becoming their share. Only when Jacek gets a stallion Szaga, things take a different turn.
In 1950, at night, a passenger train kills a man on the tracks. He is Orzechowski, an engineer since 1914. An inquiry immediately follows. Testimony takes the form of flashbacks. Tuszka, the station master, believes Orzechowski was a saboteur; at least one on the inquiry panel agrees. Zapora, the young engineer on the train that hit Orzechowski, gives more complicated testimony about the dead man - stiff-necked, proud, imperious, critical of Zapora and other younger workers. The signalman at the crossing where Orzechowski died also testifies. Can the panel arrive at the truth in a world where workers unite, inferior coal is a badge of honor, and the old order is suspect?
This documentary describes the process of building and the first days of the combine and the city of Nowa Huta. Andrzej Munk realizes the postulates of socialist realism decreed in Polish cinematography in 1949.
