During a film course lead by Yvette Biro at the Hungarian Academy of Drama and film in 1995, the director students were shown a black-and-white photo taken by Lucien Herve in 1952, and they were given the task of writing a short film based on it. Three women are standing at the outskirts of a village, looking out of the picture in the same direction. This six-minute one-shot film shows what the Herve photo does not.
The film relates the cruel reality of a small mountain village. Inspired by the 100-year-old painting Il quarto stato (1901) by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, it takes the characters and situation of the painting as a starting point and creats an original fiction.
The story takes place at the end of World War I and in the period that followed. It focuses on an intellectual family from Temesvár with three sons.
