During the Great Patriotic War, battalion commander Pavel Akimov fell in love with the military translator Anechka Belozerova, but the circumstances of military life separated them.

The film is based on the early autobiographical stories of Vasily Makarovich Shukshin. A bright, emotionally rich movie about the childhood of a boy from a distant Altai village, about his family — his sister and mother, about work, holidays, joys and troubles of ordinary Russian peasants during the Great Patriotic War...