Oļegs Ivanovs

Tragedy of the Zitars family based on the novel by Vilis Lacis.

Arvīds Lasmanis can't hold any job for long because he is not ready to tolerate deceit and slapdash work. He still has to feed his family, by chance he finds a well-paid job as a gravedigger. A friend helps Arvīds to find a place in a construction team, but other workers don't approve of Arvīds' high principles. His wife accuses him of not knowing how to make money, the family lives crammed in one room of a shared flat. The Soviet absurd comedy tells a story about a man who, while at odds with the system, won't lose his conscience and his true self, even if it means saying no to wealth and comfort.

At the beginning of the summer of 1905, representatives of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party Krasilnikov and Elkonen turned to Captain Zhanis Trautman, a Latvian political emigrant living on the outskirts of London, with a proposal to lead a steamer with a cargo of weapons to the shores of Russia. Having recruited a team of old and tried comrades, Trautman changes the crew of an English cargo ship bought by the front men. In the course of the squabble that arose on this occasion, a sailor of the old crew, David Blake, was stabbed. The wounded Blake and the veterinarian Gruber, who accompanied the cargo of anthrax drugs, are forced to leave on board. On the high seas, weapons and explosives were loaded on board. The steamer headed for the Oresund Strait, where a messenger was to meet him.