Set on the Hungarian plains of the 1890s. When a group of farm workers go on a strike, demanding basic rights from a landowner, they are met with soldiers on horseback, facing harsh reprisals and the reality of revolt, oppression, morality and violence.   Structured as a passion play. An awesome fusion of form with content, and politics with poetry. Stylized dance with collective choreography depicts the fight of those answering terror with violence. The film honors the agrarian Socialist movements of the end of the nineteenth century, while. conveying a historical philosophical critique of the Socialist ideas.   Winner of the best director prize at Cannes in 1972, and widely considered to be the greatest Hungarian film of the 60s and 70s.