When a political decision is made as to the location of a new large chemical factory, Stefan Bednarz is put in charge of it. This honest communist party man has to confront the local community opposing the construction.

1982, Poland. A translator loses her husband and becomes a victim of her own sorrow. She looks to sex, to her son, to law, and to hypnotism when she has nothing else in this time of martial law when Solidarity was banned.