A simple, religious Hungarian woodcutter lives with his wife and boy child with a small community of squatters among the peaceful mountains of Transylvania until a lumber company claims their land and forces them all to become company workers or else leave the land. This 1942 Hungarian film takes a detailed and unflinching look at the hardships of mountain living, and the realistic approach proved influential to the Neorealist movement in Italian cinema. Hungarian master director Istvan Szots won the Biennale Cup at the Venice Film Festival for his auspicious debut, but the film was banned by the Nazis as "too Catholic" and not publicly exhibited until after World War II.

A Hungarian soldier returning from fighting in the Second World War marries the woman he believes to be the widow of a former comrade who he thinks died in the POW camp in which they were held.

Bálint Zeke, the honest old miller of the village, leaves his water-mill to Anna, his only daughter, while the will also provides for the mill to be managed by Forintos Mátyás, a young miller, whom he has been raising since he was very young and treats as his own son. The two young people seem to "like each other anyway", and their marriage would make the old man happy.