Andrey Filippov

The social ferment in late 19th century Russia which led to the 1917 Russian Revolution is movingly portrayed in this lengthy historical drama, which is very faithful to the 1907 novel The Mother by the celebrated Marxist writer Maxim Gorky (1868-1936). In the story, "the mother" has no other recourse than to watch her decent, kindly husband turn into an animalistic, drunken brute as a result of working in the inhuman conditions of a steel mill in the town of Sormovo. When he begins to express his suppressed rage by beating her, she is defended by her teenaged son Pavel. After his father's death, Pavel is forced to go to work in the same factory. However, Pavel and his friends begin investigating Marxism and socialist thought, and work to organize their fellow workers.

A story about two old people living in the abandoned faraway village.

Shirokov, an engineer and inventor at an electromechanical plant, becomes a victim of street chaos and is hospitalized for an extended period. Upon learning of the incident, his colleagues do everything they can to ensure that Shirokov's latest invention becomes a part of his beloved plant.