Maria comes from abroad to visit an English family. On the way to the Cinema Club she gets lost and misses the film. Next day the children find the cinema unlocked. They take her over it and try out the apparatus. Then they surprise a thief and give chase, finally trapping him with the spotlight so that the police can catch him.
It's a crisp autumn morning. Marta prepares breakfast and goes to work. Little Jenda has a sore throat, so she has to go to her grandfather's to look after the boy.
The young generation is not very at peace with the morality of their parents. In a story set in a Moravian village, the otherwise contented cooperators indulge in stealing from the common property without seeing anything wrong with such actions.
After years of drifting around, Willi Palko arrives in the lignite mining area. He was not only looking for a new job, but also wanted to finally settle down here.
When a former artisan is tricked into putting his sister up as collateral for a loan by a gangster boss in a crooked gambling casino it sets in motion the story of Ooka Echizen, the famed magistrate of Edo during the reign of Shogun Tsuneyoshi.