AllMovie

Darek, now a grown man, remembers the most extraordinary day in his life. On June 28, 1956, just after Darek entered his teenage years, a worker's strike erupted in his city. Darek is in the classroom with his buddies and his teacher when he first hears of the strike. His teacher's lover is Zenek, one of the key figures in the strike, and to support the protestors, the students decide to strike too. Darek, whose father is a secret policeman, ends up with Zenek for a while and then meets up with his buddy Peter, whose father is leading the strike, to embark upon a chaotic and ultimately tragic journey though the tumultuous city streets. Meanwhile, five aged professors sit trapped in a Pullman car, observing and commenting with neither comprehension nor insight about the violence occurring around them. Though this is an emotional tale, it is cinematically closer in feeling to a documentary than the melodramatic tearjerker it could have been.