In 1952, at the University of Leningrad, two budding physicists—Oleg Touline and Sergei Krylov—share a radical dream: to tame the weather and harness thunderstorms as a tool for scientific progress. The campus climate treats cybernetics as a bourgeois fantasy, and Sergei’s public challenge, dismissing it as electronics wedded to mathematics, sets him on a collision course with authority. His bold stance leads to his expulsion and the loss of his scholarship, forcing the pair to confront a central question that drives the film: should a scientist compromise to keep working, or stay true to a stubborn ideal?
With his future unsettled, Sergei takes a factory job while continuing his studies at night. He crafts a presentation on gas discharge and presents it to Professor Dankevitch, a renowned mind in the general theory of electric fields. The debate is intense, and Dankevitch exposes flaws in Sergei’s results, pushing him to doubt his own abilities. Determined, Sergei resolves to study under Dankevitch, even as the professor initially rejects him. He eventually earns a place as a porter in Dankevitch’s research building, earning admission to Professor Anikeev’s lab team, where a pragmatic, unorthodox mentor shapes his approach to real-world experimentation and mentors him toward Dankevitch, who later accepts him into the team.
As Sergei becomes absorbed in his work, he meets Lena, a spirited young woman who initially resists his advances but gradually warms to him. The project’s fate mirrors a wider clash: Dankevitch’s patient, long-range method confronts the broader scientific community’s appetite for immediate, tangible gains—such as thunderstorms that could protect crops. Dankevitch eventually loses funding and credibility, and Oleg urges Sergei to walk away from the project. Yet Sergei faces a moral test and chooses to stay, convinced that persistence is essential to genuine discovery.
Dankevitch’s health worsens, and Sergei’s impatience grows. He joins a global expedition to gather data for his thesis, a choice he later regrets when he hears praise for Dankevitch abroad. Returning to Leningrad, he discovers Lena has married someone else and that he missed Dankevitch’s funeral. Estranged from his colleagues, Sergei works in administration until a turning point—Dankevitch had once recommended him to Galitsine, a revelation that rekindles his drive to move to Moscow and continue his research on atmospheric electricity.
Meanwhile, Oleg pursues his own experiments, proposing a daring plan to fly a plane into the center of a thunderstorm. Despite resistance from Galitsine and a safety general, the project gains approval. Tragedy strikes when a colleague, Richard, dies in a plane crash caused by a sabotaged storm detector, shaking the entire endeavor to its core.
In the aftermath, Sergei defends the project before an inquiry commission, while Oleg abandons his experiments. Drawing on Dankevitch’s notes and Richard’s calculations, Sergei delivers a pivotal lecture that vindicates his course and, against all odds, earns institutional support for the continuation of the work. Reunited with Lena and buoyed by vindication, Sergei steps into his mentor’s legacy and prepares to push the boundaries of atmospheric electricity even further.
