In a remote mountain village, a woman and her lover murder her husband on his return from Germany, where he has been working as an immigrant laborer. When the lovers are arrested after an abortive flight, the examining magistrate attempts to reconstruct the crime with the help of a documentary filmmaker (Angelopoulos himself). But investigation only proves the impossibility of reconstructing reality; one invariably creates a new reality, or multiple realities, in its place. Thus in his first feature Angelopoulos challenges the most basic tenets of cinema, of journalism (the screenplay is based on a true incident), and by implication, official truth. The pompous psychology of the police inspectors, as well as the matter-of-fact sincerity of the journalists, are easily undermined by Angelopoulos's quiet observation of the village itself. Abandoned, as most modern villages are, its silences are deafening, its isolation so complete as to envelop the remaining inhabitants in a futureless present-the death throes of a landscape. And that may be motive enough.