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A young Russian woman asks a Red Army soldier to spend the night with her in the wake of the Nazi invasion. Fearing she may soon perish, the woman hopes for one night of romance before what could be a horrible demise. Black-and-white photography is mixed with color as moods change in the film. Women are captured and sent off to concentration camps or to work in brothels for the pleasure of the sadistic Germans. A Russian woman places a noose around her own neck rather than let a Nazi touch her. Some of the victims manage to escape and they try to return to their war-torn home in the Ukraine to join the defense. Yulio Solntseva has directed and written the screenplay for this film, taken from the literary works of her late husband Alexander Dovzhenko. This feature appeared at the 1969 San Francisco Film Festival in addition to six previous films by Dovzhenko.