Set in 1946, the film tells a story of a Polish villager returning home after years in a concentration camp. Mateusz is an old-timer, a saddler, who finds nothing but hostility when he makes it home after years away. He is not a Jew, though the villagers brand him one and give him a hard time. They feel guilty about the death of his son at the end of the war, and don't want the father around. In the background: beginnings of the Communist regime in Poland.

Among Jan Jakub Kolski's short films, critics assign special significance to "Ładny dzień / A Nice Day", which tells the story of two elderly people who spend their time taking care of their old horse. This film is perceived as a harbinger of the unique sensitivity that would come to characterize the world which the director would create in his full-length features