villager
The action takes place during the Great Patriotic War. Peasant Matryona Bystrova loses her husband at the front, then her eldest son goes missing. Matryona decides to save the youngest son at all costs and shelters him from being drafted into the army in the attic of the house until the end of the war. But it turns out that saving her son, she condemns him to spiritual death, and herself to torment of conscience. A private story about the mother of a deserter grows to epic proportions...
train passenger
Kolya Kasatkin, who saw in his wife Tanyusha the ideal of female charm, tenderness, kindness, who loved her to the point of oblivion, was at a loss before the idle conversations of well-wishers about his wife's betrayal. Having found his wife with the choir director, Nikolai demanded a divorce. Continuing to love each other, the former spouses are unhappy in separation. Kasatkin's new hasty marriage did not return his peace of mind. In daily agony, in the pursuit of a past life, he also lost his old dream — to live and work in the Far East, where he served in the army. Both realized too late that love does not forgive hasty decisions, that it must be able to keep and protect.
Verka
Having lived for his pleasure most of his life, floor polisher Ivan Karetnikov, on the threshold of his 60th birthday, did not for the first time leave his next wife himself, but she abandoned him, moreover, in public. In addition to these troubles, he was fired from his job, replaced by a mechanical polisher. In this difficult moment, Karetnikov remembered the first wife, and then the second and third.
But turning to each of them, he seems to begin to lose hope of seeing compassion for himself.
A love story during wartime.
Sanya Zvorykina
The end of the civil war. A sailor Alexey Zvorykin is appointed Director of the automobile plant. After training in America at Ford he finishes release of the first Soviet lorry and personally takes part in the international motor rally in Sands of Kara-Kuma which is won by our car.
Nastya
A story about women and their village set during the years after WWII.
Nyura
Based on short stories by Vasiliy Shukshin. About the life and people of the modern Soviet village. Old Yermolai lived all his life in one village. He has four sons, each with their own problems. The youngest foolishly ended up in jail and, three months before his release, greatly missing his family, escaped.
Mother
Young family is spending vacations in the summer house.
A story of Victor, a young man who is working in a big mine as driver.
Once again, director Yulia Solnsteva directs a movie that her late husband Alexandre Dovchenko scripted but did not live long enough to shoot. In this wartime drama, the emphasis is on the heroics of both the civilians and the soldiers during times of severe stress in World War II. At the core of the action is one man in particular, whose sacrifices and heroics speak for a much larger group.