Mikhail Alekseyev

Based on the novel of Mikhail Alekseyev "Bread — as a Noun." About the fate of a Russian woman who endured all the hardships of war and post-war life. After the war, those few who survived at the front returned to their native village. But Marfa's husband, whom she had been waiting for for so many years, would never return. Marfa, a beautiful and proud woman, remains true to her only love...

Avdey, the husband of the tractor forewoman Fedosya leaves her for another woman. Their 18-year-old son Filipp can not forgive his father and on the day of the new wedding even tries to run over a tractor car in which the father is driving with a new wife. Shortly after the wedding, Avdey realizes that he made a fatal mistake and is trying to return to Fedosya, but she cannot forgive. Filipp was taken into the army, on the border where Filipp serves, an armed violation of the border occurs, during which he dies.

Set around the Volga river, the story begins around 1900, when Russian peasants are let free and allowed to own their farmlands. But soon they suffer from losses during the 1917 Russian Revolution and the following Civil War. Then, the major national catastrophe is started by Stalin: his communist government kills millions of farmers and steals all their food supplies, causing the longest and deadliest famine all over central Russia during the 1920s and 1930s.

Since he was ten years old, Misha Kharlamov had dreamed of having his own apple orchard. Ulyana, the owner's daughter, loved Misha and believed in his dream. When the girl was given in marriage to someone she did not love, she lost her mind and left the village. Not finding Ulyana, Mikhail planted an apple orchard in memory of his beloved. One fierce winter he gave the orchard to people so that they could flood the stoves. And in the spring new shoots appeared on the cut trunks.

The Carpathians, 1944. The truck with the employees of the divisional newspaper was blown up by a mine. Everyone was alive, but the font was scattered by the blast wave — and now, under the bullets of the enemy, the newspapermen must collect the material of the next issue of the newspaper literally in fragments...