Alexandru Tatos draws on the tale of Antigone in this World War II drama of a village schoolteacher who defies a German edict not to bury the corpse of a partisan left in the village square as a lesson. As the whole village becomes involved in Anastasia's decision, each person offering his or her own reason why she should not become involved, Tatos deals a controversial blow to the myth of wartime resistance. But his film is also a complex portrait of the mechanisms of totalitarianism in such a village where, unlike Anastasia and the partisan, both of whom die for the sake of dignity, people paved the way for Nazism with their own concern for a semblance of tranquility.