The heroine of this story, a young woman, considers herself a believer and tries to live according to the commandments. But an unexpected meeting turns for her into love for a married man, and her feeling does not remain unanswered. However, a man belongs to a culture where the presence of a mistress is not forbidden, and even encouraged, while divorce is extremely negatively perceived. He sees no problem in starting a second family. The heroine will have a harsh choice between her faith and her beloved. And the most important thing is that she will have to find out whether she can make such a choice on her own, or everything is predetermined from above.
The film is about the life and death of the outstanding playwright Alexander Vampilov. Life and death, which reflected the era. The two most important meanings are connected in this story. The fate of a simple provincial man who chooses the path of the artist and the love of their native places.
Director Andrey Kalistratov is making a multi-part television film about the literary life of Petrograd after the Civil War, about the House of Arts, which was created by the Bolsheviks to control the creative intelligentsia. Modern Petersburg and Petrograd of 1921 are intricately intertwined in the director's mind. The cruel, bloody, but romantic world of the first years of the revolution and the artistic and everyday environment of modern cinema coexist in one space. The main characters of the film that Kalistratov is shooting - the poet and former officer Pyotr Versilov, his girlfriend Olga, the French documentary cameraman Etienne Faberge and his wife Francoise - are as real to the director as the people around him-the film's producer Semyon Mikhailovich, the film crew, actors, friends, acquaintances, relatives. Despite the demands of the producer to be "simpler" and "more economical", Kalistratov wants to make a real historical film, not a standard TV series "soap".
