Pavel Nazarov

It focuses on how youngsters in capitalist Russia turn to crime. Either they thrive at their game or they get locked up. In any case they're trapped. The portrayed kids are old men, acting wise and tough while in fact they're victims.

This is the second installment of a three-part series of autobiographical films about the director's life. The first, which won various awards for its maker, was entitled Zamri Oumi Voskresni and was later retitled Zari, Umri, Vokresni ("Freeze-Die-Come to Life"). At the end of that film, set at the conclusion of World War II, the young Valerka was striving hard to overcome the inertia of just getting by, along with his sometime friend Galiya. In this one, he is adjusting to Galiya's death and is back in school and is living with his mother, a prostitute. After a girl at the school is found to have been gang-raped, the headmaster chooses Valerka to be one of the scapegoats, though he had nothing to do with the deed. The punishment seems mild enough, he was simply expelled from school. However, after quarrelling with his mother about the incident, he takes to the road, and discovers a society so bleak, degraded and hopeless that it is a wonder he remained alive.

1947년 극동에 위치한 탄광도시 스촨. 열두살 소년 발레르카는 옛 소련 지식인들의 유배지이자 일본군 죄수와 포로들이 사는 강제노동 막사에서 엄마와 단 둘이 살아가고 있다. 엄마 니나는 생계를 위해 매춘을 하고 썰매가 갖고 싶은 발레르카는 엄마 몰래 돈을 모은다. 그러나 시장에서 차를 팔아 어렵게 모은 돈으로 산 썰매를 누군가 훔쳐간다.