Ten-year-old David joins a sailing club. He trains hard and helps repair the sailing boats, but people have to take turns actually sailing. The club chairman Vala wants David to sail with his son Olda. Olda's previous team mate Béda has grown too fast, but with little David Olda could win a place on the regatta to Finland. Olda is arrogant and accustomed to winning with little effort; he bullies David and calls him "Greenhorn". He makes David his servant and blames him when things go wrong.

A remake of Vávra's 1948 atomic age thriller Krakatit.

In an unusual, apolitical approach, director Jaromil Jires has fashioned a standard drama that features an older lawyer with failing health who goes to practice in the countryside. His series of odd court cases reveals more about the human condition than about law. In one of these litigations a wayward nephew has cheated his elderly aunt out of her savings. In court, the nephew insists the money was a gift, but his aunt explains she only gave him the money as a loan. Although the lawyer technically wins the case, everything of value seems lost in the meantime. His services are paid for in rabbits because the aunt has no currency, and in the end, the nephew cons his aunt into parting with her savings anyway. Other cases expose similar types of petty corruption.