Ship "Saturn" prepares to return home from the American west coast. The ship is damaged at a very bad time, when a severe storm comes their way, they loose propulsion. The currents are pulling them towards a rocky island and they must try the impossible to save themselves.

On a cement factory construction site, the chief engineer reconnects with his ex wife, time to re-evaluate his life priorities.

Jon, a young peasant love more "the land" than his engaged girlhood, Florica.Just when Ion thinks he has become master of his own land, he realizes that he has betrayed his heart, and that he is still in love with Florica, not with his wife. It is the curse of love that will be Ion's undoing. Badly mistreated, Ana, his wife, is driven to despair and she hangs herself. Ion, now free and wealthy, believes that the time has come for him to have Florica. Florica's husband, George waylays Ion and savagely murders him with a hoe.

In the early 19th century the Romanian Theodor Diamant was inspired by the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier and established one of Fourier's "phalansteries" in Rumania. The film dramatizes the origins and demise of this effort, called the "Scaieni Phalanstery (the term is derived from "phalanx" and "monastery"). Among the socio-political commentary that is conveyed throughout, there is an important collusion between the army and the wealthy landowners of the time, and as the film points out in its own way, neither of these groups has ever been convicted of socialist/utopian tendencies.

In a mountain village, two kids find a roman fibulae. Trying to find more, they stumble upon the notes of a history professor about a Roman settlement Lisidava. They are trying to locate it.