On one of the October nights at the ball, gymnasium pupils and officers scoff at the love of Kuzma Zakharkin, the “cook's son”, to Lena, the daughter of the manufacturer. Cannon volley interrupts the fun. In the city begins the Moscow armed uprising of workers.
At the center of the fate of two families is the capitalist Leontyev and the worker Zakharkin, whose sons became the organizers and participants of this uprising.
The first screen adaptation of an epic Russian novel about a village of Cossacks on the Don River, covering the last days of peace on the riverside before the beginning of the First World War.
The rebel leader Jose Real is allowed to leave prison for one day to visit his family. But it is a ruse to make him reveal the whereabouts of his rebel gang. This existential drama disguised as a saga about the proletarian struggle presents a lonely and insecure individual who is challenged to act more heroically than he is prepared to, but who constantly questions his confidence and loyalties.