Immediately after the war, veteran Vasile Karuntu came to the machine-building plant where Ion worked, who soon became a foreman. They both fell in love with Maria, but she married Vasile. With Maria, he created a family, raised four children, three of whom are adopted orphans. And now, many years after the first rivalry, the management of the plant releases Jonah from the foreman and appoints Vasile instead...

A year in the life of a family in a typical backyard in the center of the Moldovan capital Chisinau in the 1990s: Zina lives here with her husband Victor and daughter Eva and, like the other inhabitants of the house, struggles for the family's financial survival. Through the eyes of the family, we experience a country in transition after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

This film si about the sabotage of a Nazi fluvial transport on the Danube during WWII.

Based on Ion Druță's opera "Casa Mare" (The Big House).