Father Holy, a village priest, battles against the state and religious bureaucracies of 1980s Czechoslovakia in his fight to raise money for a new church roof. Permeated by his love for the villagers, his encounters are marked by his good humor. In his losing battle against Church and State, Holy is ordered to be transferred away from his parish and his allies. The Czech-American, Milena Jelinek, adapted this moving story from the the novel The Forgotten Light, by the 1930s Czech writer/poet and Catholic priest Jakub Deml. (1934)

This 1978 film, set in 1907, is a tribute commemorating the 80th year of Czechoslovak filmmaking. Among the accomplishments of Czechoslovak filmmakers of the period are, the improvement on the Lumière camera and the creation of a commercially viable indigenous cinema years before Berlin. Czechoslovak films were sufficiently distinctive and plentiful to make a notable contribution to world cinema of the time. In this movie, the filming of several one-reel movies of the period is re-enacted ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide.