The film was made on the basis of the literary version of events in the life of the famous Russian ethnographer, anthropologist, biologist and traveler who studied the indigenous population of South-East Asia, Australia and Oceania.

A group of children are helping partisans in a little occupied Ukrainian town during the first year of WWII.

Mirsky once left the seaside town, leaving his wife Natalia with their young daughter Svetlana. Natalia married prosecutor Kochan. And the girl, in his person, found a sensitive and responsive father. The family lived happily. When the daughter grew up, Mirsky returned to the city and, having got a job at the ballet school, where Svetlana studied, very soon achieved her respect and love, and at the subsequent trial the right word on the rights to paternity. However, very soon the birth father became convinced that he had nothing to give his daughter, and he allowed him to return to the Kochan family.

Two tankers loaded with gasoline made the Tuapse - Leningrad flight. Suddenly they were fired upon by German bombers - that is how the war began for them. One of the ships perishes. But the second continues on its way to its destination ...