Summary Athens in the early 1950s. Craftsman Antonis Barkas, a master puppeteer, watches with sadness as the art of the shadow-puppet theatre dies. The audience for Karagiozis shadow-puppet shows abandon en masse the art form which, for more than half a century, entertained them, going now instead to the cinema, which rapidly spreads across the cities and the countryside. In his attempt to stop time, he clashes with everyone around him. First of all with his younger sister, Angela – who lives in his shadow and has been engaged for ten years to a fortune hunting sailor, Simos – and with the nice singer of his troupe, who stands by him until the end, as well as with his assistants Theofanis and Angelos. Neither his age nor his romantic personality permits him to abandon his beloved art, and so he dies with it.