Set against the Kazakh steppes in the mid-1950s, the film follows the people who answer the call of the Virgin Lands Campaign. During harvest season, nine-year-old Alyonka, Natalya Ovodova leaves her parents and travels 500 kilometers to the district center to continue her schooling, as the newly established state farm in the Virgin Lands area has no school yet. Along the way, her fellow travelers share stories of their lives and loves during the long journey. The film unfolds as a tapestry of vignettes, with each tale recounted through Alyonka’s childlike perspective, turning personal memories into a broader portrait of a nation trying to redefine itself in a harsh but hopeful landscape.
One thread follows Elsa Kalnyn, a young dentist who moves from Riga to work in the Virgin Lands after graduating from medical school. Facing challenges such as the lack of a proper office and dental chair in the state farm’s medical post, Elsa sets off on an adventurous trip to the district center Aryk to procure the necessary equipment, illustrating the improvisation and resilience that life on the frontier demanded.
Alyonka herself recounts a humorous episode where she decides to earn five failing grades at school, nearly driving her kind and elderly teacher Vitaminych, Erast Garin, to despair. The moment highlights both the lighthearted mischief of a curious child and the patient, steady presence of an educator trying to keep pace with changes sweeping the region.
Another tale features Lida, Maya Menglet, a city girl from Moscow who grows bored with life on a Komsomol construction site in Belogorsk, where her tractor-driver husband, Stepan Revun, Vasily Shukshin, had taken her. The couple moves to the Virgin Lands, but their marital struggles persist, further complicated by the absence of a registry office (ZAGS) in the state farm, underscoring the bureaucratic and social hurdles that accompany personal upheaval in a rapidly expanding settlement.
Lastly, the story of Vasilysa Petrovna, Irina Zarubina, a kindhearted Russian woman, is marked by tragedy. Her daughter Liza, Natalya Seleznyova, dies heroically while trying to save the seed reserves. Despite the loss, Vasilysa’s other daughter, living in a Siberian village, resolves to take her late sister’s place and come to the Virgin Lands, a testament to family loyalty and the stubborn hope that sustains people when faith in a collective project is tested by sorrow and distance.
Together, these intertwined stories form a moral and emotional map of the Virgin Lands Campaign, showing how young and old alike navigate ambition, danger, and everyday grace. The film uses Alyonka’s fresh, observant lens to connect intimate moments with sweeping historical change, offering a compassionate, human-centered view of a monumental chapter in the region’s history.
