A film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Leo Tolstoy. The main character of the film is Prince Stepan Kasatsky, an officer, an ardent, proud young man — a big fan of the tsar. Kasatsky is going to marry, but at the last moment he learns from the bride that she was the mistress of the emperor. The prince is deeply disappointed in social life, he takes a monastic vow and leaves the capital. Faith in God was to save the soul, but passions and worldly temptations don't leave Kasatsky.

An air base for forest protection is located not far from the border. A team of parachute firefighters takes off to extinguish the fire. Newcomer Valentin Volgin shows indecisiveness during his first flight and is late with his jump. Painfully experiencing his first failure, he avoids the gaze of the pretty instructor Irina Aleeva, who witnessed his unsuccessful jump. And then the team receives the task of providing assistance to the border guards, and Valentin, after a tense chase through the burning forest, overtakes and detains the saboteur.

The famous scientist, academician and art critic Andrei Ilyin, who survived with the Hermitage staff the harsh trials of the Leningrad blockade, returned to his hometown after many years. The whole life of Ilyin is connected with Leningrad. A life that in the distant years of World War II would have seemed to have no future, but which, despite the unbearable horror of hunger and devastation, continued only in the name of the future ...

Research in the field of memory is being conducted under the leadership of Academician Arkhipov. He, like many other thinking people, is not indifferent to the purposes for which scientific discoveries can be used and how modern they are.