The middle-aged Valya is waiting for the arrival of her groom, whom she met through correspondence. Valya prepares for the meeting: she bakes pies, buys linen, quarrels with her old mother, and argues with the neighbours from the village. The villagers sceptically look on her marriage to a man who has been released from prison...

The year is 1941. Nazi Germany has declared war on the USSR and begins launching air assaults on Moscow and St. Petersburg. Stalin immediately orders a retaliatory air campaign under the code name “Wings over Berlin.” The closest entry point to Berlin from the USSR border was an airfield on the Estonian island Saaremaa in the Baltic Sea. It would be a 7-hour flight over enemy territory in outdated aircraft leaving no chance of survival for the tail crew members in case of attack. Despite overwhelming odds, the first units completed the mission and made it back to base safely, unlike many others that followed.

Maria, a wife of a deputy commander of a military base, begins a relationship with another officer, Their affair quickly spirals out of control, fatally and irreversibly changing the course of Maria's and her family's life.