Jerzy Szajnowicz-Ivanov, the son of a Polish mother and a Russian father, raised in Greece, reports to the Carpathian Brigade in the spring of 1941. While the Poles are wary of him at first, he proves his worth by taking part in several sabotage actions against the Nazis.

Having remained alone in his village house, old Gatyo must move in with his son and daughter-in-law in their flat in the city. They receive him with great understanding and sympathy but cannot find the key to his heart. Torn out of his natural environment and left bewilderingly rootless, this good man cannot adapt himself to the urban way of life. He does not like the mayonnaise he is offered, does not know how to use the lift. The people hurrying in the streets seem to him indifferent, and some even sly and deceitful. He sees the city as a place full of hostile people and inanimate objects. He badly misses the warm human touch of his village. Death is the only possible solution to the tragic conflict of this peasant, crucified between the archaic and the modern, and unable to adapt to the urban lifestyle.

A study in human psychology that uses five disparate characters from clearly defined social positions, this film offers as much insight into the society of a changing Bulgaria, as it does into the minds of individuals in conflict. The story centers around transporting a worker's corpse, in a truck, to the mountain village where he was born. In the truck is: a man who may be suffering from tuberculosis, and who has an unfaithful wife at home; a doctor (the intellectual); a bookkeeper worried over the salaries she pays out; a hermit picked up on the road; and the driver who is a rough-and-ready working-class symbol. The seeds for conflict are set both by the personalities of the five in the truck and by their social background. The director Christo Christov, acknowledges his debt to Henri-Georges Clouzot and the Wages of Fear, for inspiration in the treatment of human conflict, its development through a set storyline, and its resolution in each of the five cases.

There is a dragon, which threatens the life of the shacked village. The attempts of lumberjacks, shepherds and hunters to get rid of the menace are without success. Their battle with the imaginary mythical monster makes them realize that their real enemies are the master Kolota and his servants. The dragon is beaten not physically but spiritually.