Yuliya Denisova

Valya persuades her classmate Sonya to skip classes and go swimming in the river, where there is sun and freedom. She timidly agrees and, in order to justify herself in the eyes of the class teacher, writes her an explanatory note. But the love that Sonya dreamed of does not happen: having received the desired kiss, Valya loses interest in her. She could have kept silent, endured, but Sonya assesses the situation - yes, life does not always match dreams - and leaves in time. She returns to the class teacher with a guilty conscience, flushes the explanatory note down the toilet. It seems that this is a failure. But in the final scene she still smiles: this experience was not in vain. Everything will still be.

Kirill Bazhenov and Eduard Antipov haven’t seen each other for over 20 years. Once, they fought together in Afghanistan, but life pulled them apart for a long time. Now they meet again. Kirill is a successful businessman and a happy family man. Eduard, on the other hand, has long been divorced, lost his job due to drinking, lives in a shared apartment, and survives on odd jobs. The former friends seem to have nothing in common anymore.

The events of the film unfold first on the territory of China, in Manchuria, then transferred to the USSR, have an extensive geographical area: from Harbin to Leningrad, and cover the period from 1928 to 1953. The plot is based on the complex, full of dramatic events, the fate of a man — Boris, the son of an employee of the Chinese-Eastern Railway.