Bucharest, 1911. Grigore Ursaru, a nineteen year old actor thrilled with the emergence of the cinema, decides to become a director and make The War of Independence, a reconstruction of the 1877 struggle between the Romanians, Russians, and the Turks, which led to Romania achieving its independence. To realise this highly ambitious project to make «the longest film ever produced» and «to conquer the world», he wages an ideological, political and familial campaign to prove cinema has a promising future and is about to become an art in its own right. In an unequal yet ever changing society with extremes of poverty and opulence, his project is continually held up both by the local authorities and the big production companies like Gammoned. Constantly feuding with his father and in love with a frivolous and mercurial woman, the persistent young man does not however let his emotions get in the way of his dream.