The leader of the fast-track workers' party is appointed worker director of the unprofitable Lucie mine. The wrong decisions he makes to increase production at any cost and to fulfil an unrealistic plan lead to a catastrophe in which his son is accidentally killed. After overwhelming criticism, the failed director wants to quit, but the senior management and party authorities continue to have fait...

An unemployed young man in the second half of the 1930s, he tries various ways of making a living and, under the influence of a group of communist youth, eventually goes to Spain as an inter-brigadista...

The happenings in a shoe factory serve as a not very thinly veiled examination of the pros and cons of both socialism and democracy.