One worker in a bankrupt factory finds an unusual solution to save his co-workers from unemployment. If it doesn't work the factory will be privatized and sold to a French company planning to convert the plant into a snail cannery. Only 300 of the 3000 workers will keep their jobs.

Director and screenwriter Mircea Daneliuc, with co-author Dinu Sararu, set this story of the peasants' resistence to land reform in the 1950s in Rumania against snatches of historical events that led up to this moment in time, and against the complicated individuals who were chosen by history to either carry out or defy the reforms. As has been said many times before, hindsight is always 20/20, which made it much easier to film this story with a balanced perspective three decades after the fact.