Yuriy Laktionov

History teacher Nikolay Echevin on his sixtieth birthday receives an anonymous letter in which he is called the "center of public infection" and threatened with murder.

The film is set in the 1930s in the USSR. The film tells about one day of the construction of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works. The heroes of the film are simple construction workers who are burning at work. Upon learning that their colleagues in Kharkov have set a record, they mobilize to break it. The entire construction site was engulfed in immense socialist competition. The teams are ready to complete the work on time at any cost. A Moscow journalist who has come to cover the scale of the great construction project is looking for the hero of his report...

Twelve-year-old Pavlukha lives on a fishing farm with his mother. His father left his family long ago, in which, apart from Paulukha, he has two other children. To help his mother somehow, the boy goes to town to earn money...