Ivan Lobyzovskiy

A comedy about Krushchev's 'Virgin Lands' project, to transform the barren and inhospitable spaces of the vast Soviet Union into fertile agricultural plains. A classically Socialist-Realist narrative of an individual's 're-education'. Zhenia, a hapless idler, arrives with a band of enthusiastic young Konsomol members to build a new town in the steppe. Although his dream, like that of all the young participants, is 'to become a tractor driver and a hero', he isn't prepared to work for the honour.

Le film relate les débuts du mouvement stakhanoviste dans le Donbass. Le jeune mineur Stepan Koulaguine décide de changer les anciens calculs et normes d'extraction du charbon. La vieille génération de mineurs, y compris le directeur de la mine, est méfiante vis-à-vis de cette idée. Ils font diversion en provoquant une explosion dans la mine. Mais, malgré tout, le mouvement stakhanoviste gagne les travailleurs de tout le pays.

A supposedly ordinary woman’s personal triumph and tragedy is explored in Igor Savchenko’s 1936 Sluchainaya Vstrecha (Accidental Meeting). Irina – the best shock worker in a provincial children’s factory – develops a relationship with the newly arrived and charming physical culture instructor named Grisha. Soon we learn that Irina is pregnant. Disappointed and angry on hearing her news, Grisha asks her about what will now happen to all their dreams.

Friends and family are trying to bring together newlyweds who separated immediately after the wedding.

Aneta, the serf actress of Knyaz Skalinsky, amazes with her beauty and talented performance of Shchepin. After the performance, a frank conversation ensues between them. The interlocutor learns that Skalinsky, pursuing the actress for a long time, gave her lover — a young actor of the troupe — to the soldiers for twenty-five years. After much deliberation, Shchepin decides to help the girl, but is too late...