AllMovie

The effects of war and impoverishment are portrayed in this story of a village just before and during WWI. The German occupation of Rumania began with the war, and made life everywhere more difficult. Caught in the vise of poverty while ironically employed in oil-drilling, the villagers have little choice as to what they should do either to survive, or to fight the occupying forces. One boy goes to the hills to escape the occupation but finds the odds much worse than he thought, and others have an equally difficult time in surviving this no-win situation.