A Soviet film (based on the autobiographical story by Valentin Rasputin) with a cautious hint of famine in Stalin’s time. In the Siberian village in autumn (!) there are not enough potatoes (!) to feed - with an abundance of land and untouched by war. Humanity teacher with the surrounding background is not very in harmony. A typical school principal for those years.
This film will well complement the memories of those whose rural (especially orphanage) childhood had, as the hero of the film, in the postwar years – for example, how they stole peas and spikelets from the fields (dodging the whips of those who were supposed to guard it), how they dug edible roots in the forest, and in school they wrote on the margins of newspapers, because there were no notebooks either. In rural orphanages (with lice and tuberculosis), pupils appeared because during the war men were taken away, and it was difficult for the remaining women to feed even their children - nephews who were without parents could no longer help. The first relatively full (“Khrushchev”) years were still ahead, and many first tried unprecedented apples after the birth of their children, and many did not survive to bananas – kiwi pineapples.