Fifteen years later, Viișoara has not changed much: the shepherd remains the same lonely character, Varvara the same energetic woman caught in complicated administrative tasks, Toderaș with his palinca hidden in the barn and his fading authority, elders wise and active, young people enthusiastic—but not all of them.

Director and screenwriter Mircea Daneliuc, with co-author Dinu Sararu, set this story of the peasants' resistence to land reform in the 1950s in Rumania against snatches of historical events that led up to this moment in time, and against the complicated individuals who were chosen by history to either carry out or defy the reforms. As has been said many times before, hindsight is always 20/20, which made it much easier to film this story with a balanced perspective three decades after the fact.