In 1919 at the end of WW1 Romanian peasant Manolache Preda returns to his native village where he finds his woman taken by another and his land sold to the local landowner.Manolache served a 10 year sentence in the salt mines for murdering a local landowner during the Great Peasant Uprising of 1907.Later he was conscripted in the Romanian Army to fight in World War One.After a 12 year absence from his native village his woman doesn't even recognize him initially but later tels him that she had stopped waiting for him and she took with another man after selling Manolache's land to the local landowner.When the landowner is found murdered on the road everyone , including the local gendarmes and the investigating prosecutors,assume that Manolache is the culprit.
