A junior employee of the Forest Research Institute is sent to collect mushrooms. In the forest, he meets a strange old woman, receives a silver horn and a magic club as a gift from her, and after some time ends up in prison as a counterfeiter. His connections with the mysterious old woman do not end there.
Stepan Astashonok, a graduate of the orphanage, came to the factory and seemed to have found his business. He soon got married, but he lived few happy days. When the war began, the Germans stole his wife and children to Germany. Having reached Berlin, the hero did not lose hope of finding them. Stepan learned about the death of his daughter, son and wife in the last days of the war. But the soldier continued to fight and tried to be human.…
A group of friends, including Mukhin, a furniture factory worker, with his wife and son, go out on a day off. There are four drunk young men in the neighborhood. They pester vacationers and start a fight. They are rebuffed only by Mukhin. Protecting his wife and child, he hit the leader of a hooligan gang. Death was instantaneous. The rowdies turn out to be locals. They pretend to be victims, blaming the "tourists" from the city.
Summer 1944, Belarus. A group of Soviet soldiers was tasked with urgently delivering our scout from the German rear across the front line. Of the three attendants, not everyone was able to stay alive and complete the task.
Falling Star is based on three stories by the contemporary Russian writer Viktor Astafyev and centers on a young soldier on the front lines who is wounded and taken to the hospital. Once there, he muses about his childhood and a little girl he had loved - someone who could easily have grown up to be the nurse that is attending to him now. As he recuperates, he and the nurse fall in love and he very much wants to marry her. At this point, the nurse's mother comes for a visit and advises him against such an action because if they were to marry and he were subsequently killed or maimed in action - the fighting is still close to the hospital - the nurse would suffer much more than if he just left her alone. Now it is up to the soldier to make a decision one way or the other.
Pavel Ivanovich Shumov is a public assessor of the court, an engineer, and a good family man. At the next court hearing, some circumstances of the defendant’s life convince the hero that this is his son. Shumov is looking for the defendant’s mother and, not recognizing her as the woman he once loved, returns home...
Fighter pilot Nikolai Muravyov is experiencing a personal drama: his wife and son left for the mainland - they are tired of life beyond the Arctic Circle. Colonel Belyy, thinking that his wife will return to her husband if he serves on the mainland, sends Nikolai on a business trip. In the new unit, Muravyov meets his fellow student Yevgeni Shelest. Friends have to fly in pairs.