When Shura's sister dies, Shura starts taking care of her newly orphaned niece. Her fiancee, Grisha thinks the child may be Shura's own, and his suspicions estrange them. This leaves the way clear for a shy neighbor who has loved her from afar to gain points as a potential mate. Stenberg's design is simple and effective - a strongly-colored portrait of the pensive heroine at a table that provides space for the title and limited credits.
Soviet border guards are fighting a gold smugglers near the Chinese and Mongolian borders.
The German conquerors are above nothing, not even the slaughter of small children, to break the spirit of their Soviet captives. Suffering more than most is Olga (Nataliya Uzhviy), a Soviet partisan who returns to the village to bear her child, only to endure the cruelest of arbitrary tortures at the hands of the Nazis. Eventually, the villagers rise up against their oppressors-but unexpectedly do not wipe them out, electing instead to force the surviving Nazis to stand trial for their atrocities in a postwar "people's court." (It is also implied that those who collaborated with the Germans will be dealt with in the same evenhanded fashion).
