A string quartet of students is about to rehearse a new piece when everything is drowned out by the repeated loud call for a general mobilisation...

A movie about little Marianne's life in a little German village 1943-1950. The peace comes in the shape of an American soldier who brings chewing gum to all the children, a soldier they call Mr. Frieden. Marianne's head is filled with fear of war and belief that the war will come back.

Inspired by a letter by Friedrich Engels and a 1974 account of two militant Marxist writers who had been imprisoned by the Nasser regime, Straub-Huillet filmed this film in France and Egypt during 1980. They reflect on Egypt’s history of peasant struggle and liberation from Western colonization, and link it to class tensions in France shortly before the Revolution of 1789, quoting texts by Engels as well as the pioneering nonfiction film Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895).