Vladimir Gorelov

Young Venka investigates the cause of death of a fellow villager during the Great Patriotic War - in the process uncovering a traitor who has been murdering witnesses to his own inglorious past.

Kind boy Alyosha saves a black hen from a bird of prey. The black chicken takes on a human form and takes Alyosha to a magical underground kingdom.

Soviet intelligence spouses — Lyudmila ("Lyre") and Fyodor ("Starling") Grekov at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War are tasked with settling in Germany. Personnel intelligence officers with vast experience are successfully introduced into German society and begin to work actively. At the end of the war, during the bombing of Berlin, fate separates them, but then they will meet in the new Germany and continue their work.

The year is 1940 and Nazi Germany is at the height of its military prowess, having captured most of Europe and eyeing the Soviet Union to the East. The Russian military command suspects hostile intent from Germany and so arranges for its spies to infiltrate ranks of the German military and the SS. Alexander Belov is a Russian spy, who travels from Soviet-held Latvia to Nazi Germany under an alias of Johann Weiss. His mastery of the German language, steel nerves and an ability to manipulate others help him to use his connections in the SS to ascend the ladder of the German intelligence. He uses his position to identify sympathetic Germans, who help him to procure vital intelligence, and to help local resistance movements in their collective fight against Nazism.

A Russian war correspondent is drafted into the war and finds himself in the middle of battle. When he loses his party card, however, he is treated as a deserter until he finds help from a kind man.

The film brings back to the screen another page of the underground youth struggle against the fascist occupiers of Moldova — the Romanian Cigurans.

Former fighter pilot turned provincial schoolmistress Nadezhda Petrovna struggles to adapt to peacetime, having internalised military ideals of service and obedience.