High school students Vitaly and Lena met by chance in the slums of the Odesa suburbs. Imitating their parents, the heroes suddenly realized that even unkind attitudes of their relatives could not prevent them from loving each other.

Surreal worlds, elegiac images and romantic letters form a stream of suppressed memories. A young man discovers diaries and film reels of his recently deceased mother. Ukrainian director Igor Minaev melts his rarely seen shorts from Soviet times into an emotional journey into the past.

In this affectionate, leisurely paced comedy, an Odesa policeman is out walking his beat when he discovers an adorable infant abandoned in a cabbage patch. He does his duty and takes the baby to an orphanage, but later he and his wife, who have an unusually affectionate and cozy relationship, decide to try and adopt the little one. What they must go through to accomplish that goal is anything but straightforward.

On the eve of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, collective farmers gather at the village club and speak candidly about their difficult lives. The meeting begins, and these same people are transformed into "levers of the party."