It was entered into the 32nd Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear - Special Jury Prize.

When he climbs out to attempt to fetch it, the teacher obliviously closes the window on his fingers, making him fall several floors to either great injury or death.

He is equally as ridiculed, and cannot control the students; yet he "volunteers" them for mandatory extracurriculars, such as agricultural work as part of a communist youth organization.

On the way back from one of these trips, the class, dressed in red neckerchiefs and marching in file as the teacher has drilled them, is forced to walk directly against a crowd of churchgoers singing hymns.

As the pioneer camp's education becomes more strictly authoritarian, encouraging students to snitch on their parents and write reports on their classmates as homework, Tom becomes more and more infatuated with the Guide who originally chose him.

They accuse him of harboring colonialist views due to the implications; but the Guide simply instructs him to read a book on the relevant theory.

The pioneer organization is suddenly dissolved, with the children being forced onto trucks to be driven home; Tom loses a portrait of Marx in the chaos and attempts to retrieve it, but one of the counselors flings it away in the urgency.