Former criminal Sergei meets Vera - an elderly unhappy woman who lives in a dormitory. After Sergei commits another crime, they run together and along the way they accidentally get into a zone contaminated by radiation. Sergei decides to stay there, but Vera does not leave him. At that moment three looters come to the territory.
Lopushansky's second film focuses on a few hours in the life of a soloist musician during the siege of Leningrad, in WWII. The Leningrad philharmonic is going to play Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony, which is to be broadcast to England. The soloist, like his fellow musicians, is weak and half-starved, and doubts whether he will be able to perform well enough.
A hunter, returning to the Taiga forest, finds a dying girl in his cabin. He stoically nurses her back to life, but the differences between them may be too great for them to remain together. Based on the short story 'Dream of the White Mountains' by Viktor Astafyev.
Braslet-2 is a grey trotter at a Russian race track stable. Daily beatings from a cold-hearted trainer turns him into an unreliable emotional wreck, and in race after race he breaks his trot and finishes at a gallop, resulting in disqualification. To the trainer Braslet is worthless, so when World War II breaks out and Soviet Army representatives come to the track to requisition horses for the front, the trainer is only too happy to be rid of him. Now, instead of a racing sulky, Braslet is forced to pull heavy carts and sleighs laden with munitions. Gradually he resigns to his fate...
