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.
Sergey Gromov is a professional stuntman. Sergey spends time free from filming to earn extra money. He mainly deals in driving cars from city to city for sale. And rich businessmen pay him well.
Pavel and Pavelina leave their rural countryside homes and move to Moscow to find work. Once there, they find that urban life is not what they thought it was and have to endure bitter hardships as they try to find work and places to live. The two meet for the first time during a fight at a bar, when they are arrested by police along with others in the building. The understand each other's troubles and band together to avoid both the police and criminal gangs that plagued Moscow toward the end of the Soviet Union.
