- Kosmet in the fall of 1944. The Partisans have successfully liberated the town of Prizren from occupying Germans,and Ramiz Lesi, a brave and cunning KNOJ captain, has to liquidate the remainder of the local Quislings, called Balists. They are led by a ruthless, German-trained soldier Kosta and by Ahmet, the brother of the famous Captain.As Ramiz is trying to get Ahmet out of the gang and hunt down the rest of the Balists, 2 new girls arrive in town. One of them is Lola, a bar singer with a questionable agenda, and the other is Vida, a withdrawn music teacher from Belgrade.—Anonymous
- A Kosmet town called Prizren in the fall of 1944. The Partisans are desperately trying to free the town, but their attempts have been unsuccessful so far. The Partisan commander, Major Demir(Abdurrahman Sala), calls in one of his best men, Captain Ramiz Lesi(Aleksandar Gavric). While on their way, Ramiz and his comrades capture a German convoy carrying food into town and decide to use it for their purposes.
As part of the plan, Partisans fake a withdrawal. After seeing them leave, the local Wehrmacht commander, Colonel Becker(Dusan Perkovic) orders a temporary withdrawal of German forces. However, he orders the leaders of a local Balist group, Kosta(Dimitar Kiostarov) and Ahmet(Rainer Penkert) to hide in the hills with their men and carry out a guerilla war against their enemies.
Meanwhile, Ramiz and his comrades enter Prizren, disguised as German soldiers and driving the convoy they captured. After driving through town without attracting any attention, they drive their way into the German High Command and capture everyone inside, including Becker. This beheads the Germans and leaves them vulnerable to a successful counter-attack. After analyzing captured German documents, Demir informs Ramiz that Kosta and his men have already escaped, his brother Ahmet among them.
The story continues in the spring of 1945. The war keeps raging in Europe and Yugoslavia, but the inhabitants of Prizren have already gotten used to a peaceful life. Ramiz is now a KNOJ officer in the town of Pec and rarely ever visits his home town. When he finally comes for business reasons, he finds himself between the local bar owner and Vida(Marika Tocinovska), a pretty music teacher sent from Belgrade. Both want a piano which Ramiz keeps in his old house- the bar owner needs it for his new orchestra, and Vida needs it for her classes. Ramiz decides to deal with Vida and invites her to the house to try out the piano, but they have a fall out when he tries to kiss her.
Next evening, Ramiz and his surrogate-father, old man Sok(Petar Prlicko) visit the bar. Ramiz s former Corporal appeals him by having the orchestra and its singer Lola(Elma Karlowa)sing a song in his honor. Angry that Lola would rather sing to Ramiz than flirt with him, a local smuggler(Pavle Vujisic)interrupts the song and calls Ramiz names, reminding the people of all the crimes commited by Ahmet and his gang. ok stands up to him and gets slapped in the face, which provokes Ramiz into a fight with the smuggler and his 2 pals. He wins, throws the smuggler out and spends a passionate night with Lola in her room.
Next morning, Ramiz says goodbye to Lola and returns to his work in Pec. He argues with Demir, angry because he removed him from the field. Demir refuses to admit he did it because Ahmet is his brother,but he warns him he won t be peaceful as long as Ahmet is a bandit.
3 days later, Ramiz and Sok meet a friend who reveals that a Balist courier came into town to take over some gold and morphini from an informant. Before he can reveal who the informant is, he is shot and killed by the courier. Ramiz chases the killer to a morgue and tries to talk him into surrendering, but he refuses and is killed by a soldier who came by. While searching the dead man, Ramiz finds a bag of gold and a box of morphini. Remembering that he saw an identical box in Lola s room, Ramiz goes to the bar, breaks into her room and starts searching it. Lola finds him in her room and hands the box over to him. When he opens it, he finds only strings and buttons and realizes he was wrong after all.
Meanwhile, a Balist informant(Dusan Antonijevic) goes into the hills and informs Kosta that KNOJ killed his courier and impounded the gold and morphini. Worried because he promised payments to his men, Kosta decides to talk to the local landowners, who are financially backing him because they are afraid the Communists will take their land away from them.
Next evening, the whole gang gets off the mountain and sneaks into a village. They attack the local political HQ and assassinate all members of the head Communist committee. One member of the gang is wounded and captured, while the others escape. Ramiz goes to the village and interrogates the captured Balist. He finds out that Ahmet is not really a Balist(he never killed anybody), but just a figurehead. Kosta uses him to draw more men into his gang, since his late father was very respected in Prizren. He also reveals that the landowners washed their hands off Kosta, aware of the nearing German capitulation, and that the gang is currently hiding in a mountain near the village of Rugovo.
After leaving an explanatory note for Major Demir, Ramiz rides into the Rugovo hills. He hopes to find the gang and talk them into surrendering through Ahmet. When he stops by a water well, he sees a shirt floating in it. He hides behind a rock as a Balist(Zlatibor Stoimirov)comes to collect his shirt, then grabs his gun and forces him at gunpoint to lead him to the rest of the gang.
When he finds the rest of the gang, Ramiz reveals himself to Ahmet, saying he wants to talk to him alone. Meanwhile, Lola is asking around about his whereabouts and finds out that Demir has sent a lot of men into the hills to look for him. When his informant tells him about it, Kosta becomes worried that KNOJ might find them while looking for Ramiz and decides to send him away immediately. He secretly orders Skender(Darko Damevski), one of his top men, to kill Ramiz as he tries to return to Prizren.
Meanwhile, Ahmet finally tells Ramiz why he became a Balist. When Ramiz joined the Partisans in the summer of 1943, the Quisling police started making a lot of trouble to their respectable father. Ahmet joined a Balist group in order to turn suspicion away from his brother and, later on, was too scared to leave them. Kosta interrupts their conversation and angrily sends Ramiz away.
However, he does not go alone:Ahmet goes side by side with him. When Kosta stops them, Ahmet reveals that he has decided to accept the proposition of surrender. A gunfight erupts between Kosta and his loyalists on one side and Ramiz, Ahmet and their loyalists on the other. A Balist is shot in the eyes and blinded during the fight. As he frantically runs between 2 fires, Ramiz and his comrades use the temporary cese-fire to escape into Prizren.
When Ramiz gives him his report, Demir yells at him for taking such action without thinking first. He reveals that Kosta and his gang are still active and that they have recently killed 3 soldiers, his former Corporal among them. Ramiz feels guilty because he did not stop the gang when he had the chance. Later, he visits Vida who lovingly hugs him, revealing her love for him. Sok finds him there and tells him that, according to some rumors, Ahmet will be sentenced and hanged after all. The rumor helps Ramiz think up a plan to hunt down the rest of the gang.
Demir immediately puts the plan into action. Ahmet and the other defectors are secretly imprisoned, and the inhabitants of Prizren are falsely informed that they were sentenced and hanged. Using the "death"of his brother as an excuse, Ramiz becomes a deserter. Kosta learns about it from his informant and sends 2 men to search the hills. They find Ramiz and take him to their new hideout, where he tells them he wants to join them so that he could avenge his brother. Kosta takes him, although he does not fully trust him.
However, he is unaware that Sok was following Ramiz and watching the meeting with his binoculars. After making sure that Ramiz is now a Balist, Sok informs Demir about it in his HQ. He immediately orders his adjutant, Lt.Imer(Milivoje Popovic-Mavid)to get as many volunteers as he can in Rugovo and stage a manhunt in the hills. It is meant to scare Kosta into runnig for the border, which will help them to execute the second part of their plan. He also tells Sok to return to the place where he left Ramiz and contact the gang.
After Imer had found some volunteers, the manhunt begins. Meanwhile, Sok finds the Balist camp and informs them about it. He also shows Kosta a newspaper ad about the capitulation of Nazi Germany.Ramiz starts trying to talk Kosta into fleeing across the border.
Meanwhile, Ahmet angrily confronts Demir, wanting to know what is actually going on. Demir tells him off- screen, but Ahmet now wants him to turn him loose so that he can find Ramiz and help him. Demir refuses, so he cuts himself with a piece of broken glass. This gets him to hospital, where he owerpowers a guard, takes his uniform and escapes from the jail. With the help of teacher Vida, he manages to get to the hills disguised as an old woman.
After a few days of thinking, Kosta finally agrees with Ramiz. He sends Sok to contact the Balist committee stationed in Skoplje and for their help in getting across the border. However, Sok immediately informs Demir about the adress in which a committee man, Kemal, will be waiting for him. Demir immediately leaves for Skoplje to handle the arrests of the committee members(which happen off-screen). His other adjutant, Lt.Nikola Petrovic(Pance Kamdzik), hides Sok in his apartment for 2 days so it would appear he really was in Skoplje. When he returns to Kosta, Sok, accordingly to the Major s instructions, tells him that a committee man will be waiting for 5 days in Djavolje Selo, a village near the border. The gang immediately starts their trip.
Lola, who is now revealed to be Kosta s lover and informant, receives a message from the other informant. He tells her that the gang is leaving for the border and that she can tag along.He also tells that he is suspicious about Captain Lesi, since he recently saw his supposedly-dead brother in the house of teacher Vida.
Some time later, the gang stops by an abandoned shed. Kosta meets Lola in the shed, but he is very cold towards her and only interested in what information she got him. As Ahmet catches up to the gang and continues following them, the gang moves on for a short time, then stops again. Lola warns Ramiz that she knows Ahmet is alive and then goes to Kosta, planning to tell him about it. However, before she could tell anything, Kosta reveals the reasons of his animosity- he cannot forget about the fact that Lola got the most of her information through pillow talk with KNOJ officers. She does not deny it, but she also tells him she did it only for his sake. In her anger, Lola keeps the truth about Ramiz a secret, but later tells him she wants full amnesty in return. Balists continue their trip to Djavolje Selo, completely unaware that Major Demir has already set up an ambush for them.
The next evening, they finally arrive at Djavolje Selo. As they are checking their surroundings for any enemies, Skender and another Balist run into their informant. He tells Skender that Ahmet is alive, that Sok(who left the gang in the meantime)was never at Skoplje and that Lola knew all about it, but kept silent. When Skender and the informant tell him about it, Kosta confronts Lola and violently strangles her when she confirms the accusations. As Kosta is getting ready to kill Ramiz, he takes out a flashlight Sok gave him and turns it on, giving the attack signal to soldiers waiting in the ambush. They turn on their spotlights,blinding the Balists, and Petrovi contacts them through a loudspeaker, offering them a chance to put down their guns. Most of them surrender, but Skender shuts down 2 spotlights by firing into them. He and Kosta then leave into separate directions.However,Skender quickly runs into another KNOJ ambush nearby and is killed.
Meanwhile, Kosta sees Ramiz running after him, so he jumps him in a small pass between 2 rocks and wounds him with his knife. He then gets ready to shoot him, but realizes someone had emptied his automatic gun. He throws it away and tries to leave, but is stopped and killed by Ahmet when he goes for his gun. Sok reveals himself behind a rock, telling Ramiz that he emptied the gun sometime before leaving.
The next morning, the captured part of the gang is rounded up and taken away.Demir finds Ramiz among the soldiers and congratulates him for a successful mission.He also reunites him with Vida and they happily leave as the film ends.
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