1990. The regime change reached the small village of Borsod. The people are unemployed and get drunk in the pub day after day. Csornai, the former potentate, wants to be mayor, so he lobbies. Polyak, a sullen, philandering lathe operator in his mid-forties, lives with his mother. He has stolen his father's lathe, which he himself has worked on for decades since his beloved father's death, from the factory that was shut down. An American tourist arrives in the village with a metal detector and begins investigating the border. It turns out that his father's plane crashed nearby at the end of the war, and he wants to find it. The pub is immediately in an uproar and the investigation begins. They find the grave of the Americans, but not everyone is there. Csornai wants to make a big deal of it, so he starts investigating. But the story takes an interesting turn, and suddenly the American's cherished...