Евгений Михайлов

It's 1980. Malin is fatherless, angry, and in trouble. At 20, he's spent a year in jail for assaulting a lover of Lily, his mother. In her desk he finds a soldier's photograph and assumes he's found his father. He confronts the man, now a teacher, and gets nowhere. At home again, he mocks his mother. Finally, she tells him her grim story, from the year before his birth. We see a people's court, where Lily's parents seek justice for their grandchild to be. We follow Lily to a prison camp, to the city where she's told to inform on the only person who's been kind, to an asylum, and finally to her current poverty and loneliness. How will Malin respond to these revelations?

Two orphans, a 18-year-old prostitute and her long-lost brother, go to the capital to start a new life. They fall into the hands of morality police inspector Meranzov - a cynic who knows all about the insignificance of human nature.

A young actress in a country town is almost smashed under the burden of the wear and tear of life. She has problems with her parents, she is not happy with her love affairs, she faces hypocrisy and cynicism in the society all the way. She copes with all the hardships with dignity, she is devoted to her work, she manages to preserve her mentality. But the most difficult thing is in store: she has to experience the true faith in what she is doing - the faith of the fire-dancers, who walk barefooted on glowing embers.