The film has a mosaic-like structure and tells the story of a post-war provincial town as it follows the fate of twenty characters. Most of the story happens within one day, when cranes are flying over the town, during the Professor's funeral, a character that has committed suicide one day prior in a bizarre fashion: he shot himself with a gun used for stunning cattle. Mostly because of this detail, the Professor’s fellow citizens try to understand the motives of his unusual suicide, each in their own way.