In 1956, there was an uprising of Hungarians against their Russian overlords, which the Russians briefly allowed to flower and then ruthlessly suppressed. One suspects that the country's rulers knew about the uprising in advance and permitted it to continue so as to be able to identify who was most actively involved. In this film, it is 1958, and five very different men are waiting in their prison cells to be taken out and executed. Their dreams, fantasies and recollection relieve what might otherwise seem to be an unnecessarily repetitive situation. The internationally known French star Matthieu Carrière plays one of the condemned men.