Věra Líznerová

In a Prague shop, an assistant has been carrying on an affair with the dishonest, married manager. An emotionally repressed auditor with domestic problems of his own uncovers serious stock discrepancies. A test of loyalties and a questioning of values concludes in tragedy.

The lives of 7 friends in a small Czech town from 1945 to some time after 1958.

Summer 1968: The crisis is reaching its peak. The director of the Prague taxi service, Mudroch, rejects the drivers' absurd demands for a pay increase. The taxi drivers decide to go on strike and seek support against Murdoch from trade unionists and enemies of the regime. The director is convinced that honest communists like him cannot be defeated. However, hateful vandals damage the brakes in his car...

Despite the initial mistrust of others, former glass worker Štěoán Urban becomes the founder and first chairman of the local agricultural cooperative. However, 1968 arrives and with it comes previously unexpected problems.

The bank officer Bedrich Hroch is sent by the bank director to the zoo, which asked an allocation of one and half kg of gold for a gold tooth for a hippo. During the check up of the hippo's teeth Bedrich is swallowed by the hippo. The man does not die in the hippo's guts and he chats quite happily with his frightened wife Dása. Journalist Pip Karen, his friend is also present to the dialogue and he has immediately an idea how to use this special situation. He tells to the new minister Borovec and his opponent professor Fibinger that there is a hippo in the zoo which can speak. He also tells them how to use this situation for a political propaganda.

The movie describes proletarian life in the Czech Lands after World War I.

Two young returnees from the First World War face a difficult future because they cannot find work. One eventually finds a job as an electrician, the other breaks into the Social Democratic press, where he gets the chance to watch up close how the Social Democratic leadership deceives its members and enters the service of the ruling classes. And a newly-trained journalist solves the problem of whether he should also adapt to the corrupt environment...

Tomáš, an unscrupulous Prague taxi driver who is involved in stealing antiques and smuggling them abroad, lives with his devoted mistress, but he is always thinking of his destined love, Kamila, who has emigrated to Switzerland. It is for her that he plans a robbery of a rare stamp, which he convinces his naive brothers to commit. The seemingly simple theft goes wrong and almost ends in the death of an innocent man. The planned escape across the border, in which a slick Swiss businessman plays a key role, also fails...