Broad Are the Leaves

Set just before the end of WWI on the abandoned farm in Vojvodina, the story follows the wife of an Austo-Hungarian colonel of a battered battalion who pays him a visit, only to experience the true Empire's decline through the meeting with disillusioned army.

The story takes place during WW II in Vojvodina. Two boys, Milan and Rasa, are sent from a partisan squad to a village for the winter. Soon Rasa becomes very ill and Milan goes to a nearby village populated by Germans. Here he finds a job as servant in Jakob Jerih's house. At night, Milan secretly nurses his friend Rasa in a hut in a swamp near the village. Soon, he finds another hiding place in master Jerih's stable. Jerih likes the diligent Milan and he even considers adopting the boy, but Jerih's cousin and assistant is against this idea. Namely because he counts on inheriting master Jerih's estate.

War arrives to a small secluded village in Vojvodina. The Germans take a group of hostages through the village and on their way molest a small boy. As revenge, the boy sets the German corn on fire. An intelligent and shrewd Gestapo officer Šicer arrives to investigate. He does not even suspect that he is up against a group of small boys, led by Milan and Vaso, and orders that all men from the village be taken to custody. He announces that one man will be shot each day unless the real culprit steps forward. Children contact the partisans.

In 1947, among the ruins of war and in anticipation of a catastrophic flood, the locals of a Vojvodina village find themselves caught between the devastation of their livelihoods and the demands of the new Communist authorities.

The story interleaves the destinies of two families, a Serbian from Bosnia and a Hungarian, in a village on the border.