In 1946 ominous clouds are gathering on the narrow horizon of Lupoaia (Valley of the Wolves), a little village in Transylvania, where traditions, impregnated with prejudice and superstition, have endured over many generations. The Second World War is over but the lives of the villagers are thrown into turmoil with the imposition of drastic, senseless changes by a new regime, intent on creating a new man for a new society. The newly-installed totalitarian government threatens to eliminate the Flonta family by declaring Teodor"s father, Pavel, a chiabur - an "enemy of the people". Pavel is arrested, imprisoned and tortured. When the wave of persecutions reaches its peak, he is forced to live in hiding. A trade, learned by Pavel in his youth, unexpectedly becomes his salvation - the Russians, who are extracting uranium in the Carpathians for their first atomic bomb, hire him. There, at the mine, the tentacles of the Securitate - the secret police - cannot reach him. Stalin is still...