Ángel Gutiérrez

Alexeï, malade et alité pour une « blanche, blanche journée », profite de son oisiveté forcée pour s’adonner à un long monologue intérieur. Il se laisse, pour d’obscures raisons, aller à un soudain besoin irrépressible de replonger dans sa propre mémoire. Il y voit notamment défiler ses sentiments ambivalents pour sa mère, et le souvenir amer d’un père poète, ayant trop tôt déserté le foyer familial. Par ce voyage intime qui le mène au cœur de son enfance, Alexeï espère éclaircir les mystères de son devenir. Il le renvoie pourtant irrémédiablement à sa propre situation et celle de son fils, confronté comme lui à une séparation parentale et au départ du père.

Based on the novel of the same name by Grigory Svirsky. 1942 year. The Great Patriotic War. The navigator Bratnov was shot down during the war, was captured, fled, returned to his people, was demoted and sent to serve in the construction battalion. His old front-line comrade Major Kabarov accidentally met him and took him to his unit. Kabanov, knowing about the lack of experienced navigators, is seeking to transfer Bratnov to his air force in the Northern Fleet, in the Arctic, to a tiny rocky island — "to the ends of the world."

At sixteen, Maria becomes an underground revolutionary. In the terrible year of 1919, while conducting propaganda among the sailors of the interventionist fleet, the heroine meets the Spanish sailor Pablo. After parting, they meet again only a few years later. Pablo and Maria leave for Spain for illegal work. After burying her husband and son, she trains personnel for Soviet intelligence during the Second World War.