Set during the Greek civil war. A villager is forced to leave his house and property and go to Thessaloniki with his daughter and son. They find refuge in an old building with hundreds of other people. They live a miserable life as the daughter becomes a whore, and the son has to work.

A tanner, swamped with debts, must abandon his trade and go work in the local factory.

Michalis returns to the tobacco growers of his rural village after having spent some time in the city and persuades them to form a collective, rather than suffer the poverty-inducing prices they are paid for their crops by tobacco brokers. They agree not to sell to any of the brokers and start to form a farmers' group. When one of the farmers breaks the agreement and is found dead, Michalis is accused. However, rather than expose the farmers' plight and give publicity to the brokers' greed, the motive the government gives for the killing is thi asimanton aformin, for unimportant reasons.