At 15 he and his family became victims of state terror. At 16 he became a freedom fighter to participate in the 1956 Revolution against Soviet oppression. At 17 he is betrayed and arrested by the dreaded Secret Police (AVH). Now he has to spend the remainder of his life in a political prison, called Hell's Hallway, to reach the legal age of 18 before his death penalty can be carried out. Peter Mansfeld was 18 when he was unjustly executed by the totalitarian regime of Hungary. Today he is remembered as one of the national heroes of Hungary.

In November 1956, many people fled to Tito in Yugoslavia and were confronted with socialism, which they called "man-faced". The film's heroes find temporary refuge on a Bunyevac farmer's farm and await their fate there, as well as in nearby Subotica, in a long-simmering family and social environment, under the supervision of local internal security officers. One of them, a participant in the 1942 massacre in Baška, later a carpenter, now posing as a revolutionary, tries to blackmail his host with old memories. A naive young man of faith tries to clear up the gendarme's past, his son, a Stalinist, and his role in the revolution, as does the penitent intellectual.