Elena Antonova

In February 1934, the steamship Chelyuskin was crushed by ice and sank in the Chukchi Sea. The ship's crew and members of the scientific expedition landed on a drifting ice floe, where they remained for two months. How did people live on the ice floe? How did they cope with loneliness and dispel dark thoughts? In addition to work, when the weather was good, they played soccer, volleyball, and town ball. They went on ski trips. They read. They managed to save four books: Pushkin's poems, Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha," Hamsun's "Pan," and the third volume of Sholokhov's "Quiet Don." We reminisced about our former lives, watched the northern lights, fought illness, dreamed, froze... In the evenings, we listened to a precious Marlene Dietrich record—we managed to save the gramophone, but only with two records. We published a wall newspaper called "We Will Not Surrender." They tried to be witty, played pranks. They created a choir...

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.

In the village of Timokhino, an explosion occurred due to the designers' oversights regarding the gas pipeline, resulting in fatalities, while the designers did not admit any guilt.

A tired, naive librarian in her fourties, has experienced hard labor, chores, and failed love. Her brittle voice and childish naiveness add to her defenselessness. Despite her stubbornness, she maintains a strong spirit that helps her stay true to herself.

The alarm sound of a siren broke the silence. There is an accident at the Gradovskaya mine! There are people down there! The miners who did not manage to get up were in danger. The mountain rescue team, led by Alexander Trigorin, went to the scene...

In 1934, Margarita Chugueva, nicknamed Vaska for her large frame and masculine strength, was working on the construction of the Moscow Metro. One day, among the newcomers to the brigade, she recognized Osip, her tormentor, who had mocked special settlers in the Siberian settlement where the family of wealthy peasants Chuguevs was exiled during the years of collectivization, and from where Margarita had escaped.

A few weeks from the life of a Komsomol leaders in Soviet Union.