The film could have been a lyrical evocation of the ČSSR's first generation: the youngsters born during the war, who grew up in a state violently at pains to find and define itself, and were now ready to break away from the nation-builder ethics of their elders – but Grečner turned it into an anxiety-riddled existentialist vision of a whole globe in fear.

The fate of Ondrej Horniak, a young civil engineer, who after graduating starts working in a construction company as a deputy construction manager on a large construction site. Here he encounters all the ills of socialist construction - sloppiness, corruption, careerism, irresponsibility. After an accident at a construction site, for which the perpetrators face prison, his superiors want to put all the blame on the young engineer Horniak.