Outsiders in the Age of Change Two young village teachers, Emma and Bebe, come to Budapest to, in accordance with the trends and tasks of modern times, relearn from the Russian language, which they taught at school, to English. The girls settle in the hostel and soon become close supporters.
The process of forging goes out of hand badly: a new language is not given to either one or the other. Because of the widespread rise in the cost of life, Emma has to earn extra money cleaning in rich apartments, and Bebe is forced to secretly engage in criminal business.
The deafeningly bitter socio-physiological essay of the Hungarian classic became one of the most ruthless studies of the spiritual state of people in transition. Back then, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the worldview of millions of people in the former socialist countries had to change drastically in a short time, as the usual ideals were rejected by new economic reforms.
The cataclysms of capitalist transformation here take on the form of the bitter grimace of the “Time of Troubles”, not so much political as moral and ethical reorganization, which instantly devalued the ideas of socialism. Istvan Szabo with discouraging candor poses damning questions that many at that time tried to avoid, including in our country, often not knowing what to say about the turning point, under the millstones of which the fates of two young Hungarian teachers disappeared.
In the ruthless finale and not retrained to "English" Emma (persuasively performed by the Dutch actress Johanna ter Stehe) sells a newspaper on the subway, shouting its symbolic name “Today” louder and more, leaving no illusions about a possible revenge.