Sketch of life within a Romanian psychiatric institution, where the patients have formed a kind of closed society. The 300 inhabitants, some living 12 to a room, become friends, they get married and split up again. Coffee and cigarettes are the official currency. The mutual barter trade and helpfulness is only interrupted for medication, sleep and food. The film, shot in a cinema-vérité style, forms an impressive witness to man’s urge to survive.