A touching story of the relationship between two teenagers who accidentally met in besieged Leningrad. Masha and Sergey are fighting hunger and death. She reads the book about the Nutcracker and the Mouse King over and over again, and the words of this story help her to be stronger, and he plays his favorite piano. The film is filled with soft sadness. The unique technique of combining animation and staged filming with the participation of actors gives the theme of war and the blockade amazing notes of authenticity of memories.

August 1960. Director Nikolai Berentsev is working on a large-scale science fiction film about an expedition to Venus. The construction of grandiose decorations begins in the pavilion. Berentsev himself develops models of planets and spacecraft, comes up with special devices for combined filming. He tries to imagine and visualize something that no one has ever seen — life on other planets. He believes that fantasy should run ahead of science, but faces skepticism from colleagues and the scientific community. In the end, he himself begins to doubt whether his film is needed by the audience, why these dreams of Space, when there are so many unresolved problems on Earth.

The end of the 19th century. The girl Varya cannot sleep because she has to lull a crying child to sleep. An icon looks at her from the corner opposite. The warm image of the infant Christ beckons and promises another life. But he never comes to the rescue. And the living baby in the cradle continues to cry.