Beautifully shot in black and white, and scripted by Tarkovsky's collaborator Andrei Konchalovsky, this powerful melodrama tells the story of a young boy who undertakes the perilous journey to Uzbekistan's capital Tashkent, to earn some money for his hungry family. Filming in the periphery of the Soviet Union, in a time of relative political relaxation, director Shukhrat Abbasov actually dared to depict the poverty and famine that resulted from the Bolshevik Revolution.

The Soviet schoolboy Ivan Semyonov is the most unhappy person in the world because he does not like to study. Everyone around him is trying to influence him, but his grandmother constantly pampers him. And he is a tireless dreamer and constantly gets into many stories.