Vitaly Leonov

“We are all from the same trust,” the old peasant replies to the driller’s foreman when he, justifying himself for the wounds inflicted on the ground, refers to the neighboring trust. “And we have no other.”

The heroes of the film are students of a pedagogical university, those who, after a year or two, have to carry knowledge to schoolchildren, "to sow the rational, good, eternal." In the meantime, student practice. True, the practice is not quite ordinary, because for the first time students leave far from the walls of their own university, for the first time they meet with students in the classroom not in the presence of their teachers, those with whom life encounters them daily at the institute, but with those who have been working for more than a year at school.

In July 1942, in the Second World War, the rearguard of the Russian army protects the bridgehead of the Don River against the German army while the retreating Russian troops cross the bridge. While they move back to the Russian territory through the countryside, the soldiers show their companionship, sentiments, fears and heroism to defend their motherland.

The film includes three short stories based on the stories of Mikhail Zoshchenko: "Crime and Punishment", "Fun Adventure", and "Wedding Event" about the negative phenomena of the provincial life of the young country of the Soviets: stupidity, drunkenness, money-grubbing, lack of spirituality.