During the early years of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, an industrial junkyard near Kladno serves as a re-education camp for “bourgeois elements”. In addition to recalcitrant intellectuals, a group of female prisoners spend their time dismantling and melting down undesirable relics like crucifixes and typewriters to make “peaceful steel” for the good of socialism. Although the men and women are strictly segregated, a tender relationship develops between a young cook and a female labourer