Yakut Stepan Beresekov periodically falls into a lethargic sleep. Only a Russian, the son of a priest, Ivan Popov, can distinguish his condition from real death. But Popov is going on a long ethnographic expedition. Stepan decides to follow his savior so as not to be buried alive.

There is no escape from the war... 1942. While all the forces of the country are thrown into the fight against fascist Germany, in the southern part of Yakutia there are gangs robbing gold mines. The largest of them is the elusive and brutal Popov gang, which collects stolen gold to organize a military coup in the Far East. In their footsteps, a small detachment of the NKVD under the leadership of Senior Lieutenant Karasev is sent through the snow-covered endless taiga.

An ordinary quarrel between teenagers spills over into a parent chat and leads to a serious conflict. At this time, in the hospital, the girl asks for an urgent operation, but the doctor, in fear of breaking the law, does not dare to perform it until midnight, when the girl becomes an adult. Somewhere in one of the apartments a frank story unfolds about a man who, secretly from his wife, begins to flirt with a seductive neighbor. In a neighboring house, a young guy borrows a lot of money from a businessman to play on the difference in exchange rates, but on this particular day the dollar exchange rate goes crazy. And the crazy old man, meanwhile, goes to another city to meet with the killer of his son, so that he will answer for everything. All of them are faced with the question of choosing and making difficult decisions on which their lives depend.

After months of exhausting trench warfare, most of Major Belyaev's battalion was destroyed. The area is ruled by German aces snipers. Hope for replenishment collapses when the convoy, in which the Soviet snipers were traveling, falls under a German airstrike. A handful of soldiers and a young hunter from Yakutia, Yegor Cheerin, survive.

A young man named Kesha returns to his village after a long absence. He has completed a prison term but now simply wants to live a quiet, normal life. His younger brother, only 17, has plans for college. However, the brothers’ perspectives on the future shift dramatically when Kesha joins a gold-mining crew.