Jan Ekl

In 1647, the impoverished noble Václav Rynda shelters an imperial commissioner-only to learn the visitors are French agents plotting a Bohemian revolt against the Habsburgs.

This film, chronicling the last days of Czech resistance fighter Maruska Kuderikova (played by Magda Vasaryova), is based on her diaries. Though she was tortured and eventually executed by the Nazis, her diaries indicate that she was optimistic for the humanity of her captors and did not by any means hate them. Told with simple dignity, this film makes clear why Maruska became a national hero.

At the funeral of his schoolmate, the nearly-fifty-year old architect Jirí Mánek (Václav Voska) meets his former close acquaintance - physician Jarmila (Blanka Bohdanová). They both are still single. Jarmila has recently returned to Prague after years of work on the frontier. Jirí leaves for a business trip. As a conservationist, he is to grant permission for an adaptation of a Baroque château to office spaces. On the road, a pretty young hitchhiker named Eva (Ida Rapaicová) stops him. Eva is Slovak and her spontaneous behavior enchants Jirí. He thus does not mind making a short detour and takes Eva all the way to the luxurious cottage of her parents. A romance develops between the two people, so different in age and temperament.

The waitress Gita from the hotel "Bobí vrch" approaches her lover who has not left his wife yet and gives him an ultimatum: if he does not do all according to her wish, she will announce to the police his machinations with foreign currency.

It is the summer of 1945. A party of young people are enjoying the beginning of a new life to the full. For them this is the year one. One of them, law student Pavel, is more attracted to film than to law. With his eight-millimeter camera, he films everything that catches his attention. One day he captures an interesting face on film, a girl with an air of mystery. Pavel visits the girl, whose name is Helena, and meets hers and her elder energetic sister Olga. From Olga, he learns that the girls have spent the years of German occupation in a concentration camp and cannot forget the horrors they have lived through.

The hero of the opening story, the Postman Puppet (directed by Zdeněk Troška), works as a postman in the mountains. When his wife is taken to the maternity ward, he goes on his usual hike through the solitudes. Little Libor goes after the father of two girls (Petr Pospíchal), who longs for a son. Meanwhile, the weather on the ridges worsens sharply. An experienced mountaineer and his little friend spend the night in a makeshift shelter... The second episode of Hádanka (directed by Jan Ekl) has a criminal plot. A new father (Vlastimil Hašek) gets drunk with friends in a wine bar and the next day becomes a suspect in a murder. He doesn't remember the critical moments, but his testimony leads to the capture of the real perpetrator... The main character of the final short story True Love (directed by Vladimír Drha) is a frat boy (Pavel Zedníček) who spends whole days in pubs. He gets a harsh lesson from his wife, who refuses to let him see the baby...