About Soviet and Japanese volley-ball players who are both rivals and friends. The events cover the period from the 1976 Montreal Olympics to the eve of XXII Olympics in Moscow.

Student Rodik Samarkin, grandson of the famous scientist-archaeologist, goes with friends to Kozary in search of ancient scythian graves. Not believing in the effectiveness of the expedition, the guys come back, leaving Rodik alone…

A young shepherd Yanka tries to save his beloved girl Marinka with the help of his magic fife.

Sergey Savinov, a yesterday's schoolboy, who failed at his entry exams, is at the crossroads. Where to go to work? After working as a stand-by in a local recreation-and-entertainment park, he tries himself as a proof-reader in typography, a laboratory assistant in a plant and exhausts all his stock of photos for passes. To replenish it, he heads for a nearest photo saloon, and makes a conclusion, that his calling, which he long considered as a hobby, is photography. A work which brings so much happiness both to him and to other people.