Twenty-five-year-old bank employee Nina returns to work from holiday with some surprising news. She has fallen in love with a young man and is soon to be married. Her parents and friends are shocked and naturally concerned - their suspicions are soon justified. One evening Nina returns home to find her flat burgled, and her beloved Gosha has disappeared. Nina confides to her neighbour, Valentina, a former actress, that she has promised to introduce Gosha to her parents at her birthday party and does not want to let them down. So Valentina comes up with an interesting suggestion - to hire an actor for the evening to play the role of Gosha.

In a small, poor town, a young worker falls in love with an actress from a traveling theater troupe and tries to keep her close, dreaming and working hard to rebuild a new town while the troupe increasingly faces decline and the end of its run.

A peasant catches a thief in his house and summons his friends—by old custom, he must settle the score. But as the night deepens, his heart softens, and before long it is the man himself who has to be driven out of his own home.