The film is a touching story about an Uzbek family who gave shelter to 14 kids evacuated during the World War II while their own child was at the battlefronts.
Woven around the daily lives of two children, nine-year-old Nastenka and five-year-old Katia, this is a story of the 17 months' siege of Leningrad and of the people and families shattered by the war, their homes bombed and destroyed, their lives in a constant anticipation of the advancing German army and air raids.