Sergei Tolstov

URSS, 1971. Six jours dans la vie de l’auteur Sergei Dovlatov, qui se bat pour écrire avec intégrité malgré l’écrasante censure imposée par le régime soviétique.

A fat middle-aged man in German officer's uniform gets off a train somewhere in Russia in winter. He is a doctor who has just been called up we learn eventually. This is the end of the line- the Germans are about to retreat. He goes to a hospital which is being evacuated and is thrown out. Kicked out he wanders with another conscript- a failed actor turned postman. The postman is deafened by a shell explosion. They meet their Russian equivalents, others as bad at killing as they are, while other Russians and Germans kill one another around them.

Young female fighter pilots arrive to the frontline. They have different stories and different fates. They are getting older, falling in love and lose their closest ones as well as take their place in the world of men. The air has become their home. However, at war no one knows whose fate is to live and who is doomed to die.