Katya and her 6-year-old son Sanya, who, in 1952, meet a veteran Soviet officer named Tolyan. Katya falls in love with Tolyan, who turns out to be a small time criminal, but who also becomes a father figure to Sanya ...
A movie about two sisters - thirteen year old Sveta, poor and abandoned by her father, who longs to go off and be a sniper in the army, and spoilt eight-year old Dina, doted on by her gangster father...
The movie is set in Belarus, where a team of counter-intelligence officers is given only three days to find a German radio operator posing as a Soviet soldier, behind soviet lines, on the eve of a major offensive.