Family Nest looks at the serious problems facing a twentysomething couple who have been married for seven years, Iren and Laci, and also their young feisty daughter Kristi. They have been forced because of a housing shortage in the communist Hungary of the 1970s to live in the cramped one-room Budapest flat of Laci’s grouchy factory worker father. Also present are Laci’s 27-year-old irresponsible and unemployed brother Gabor and his young adult sister, and his embittered mother. The overcrowded flat causes an ill temper among all parties, as Laci returns from a two year tour of duty in the military and is lectured to by his unwise father for not reenlisting and thereby possibly saving up to get an apartment on his own. There’s one squabble after another. All the men prove to be brutes, the women martyrs. This ordinary family believes all their problems can be solved by getting adequate housing. Iren visits social services every week to press her claim for an apartment, but is given the cold shoulder as the bureaucratic official explains an apartment is given once a year on a points basis and she’s at least three years away from getting her own place.