Based on the play of the same name by Anton Chekhov. About the searches and doubts of the Russian intelligentsia at the end of the 19th century. Events unfold on the estate of Pyotr Sorin, which brought together representatives of secular society - actress Irina Arkadina, the host's sister and her lover, the famous writer Trigorin. Sorin’s nephew, Konstantin Treplev, in love with a neighbor girl Nina Zarechnaya, who dreams of becoming an actress, writes for her a play that she plays in the scenery of Sorin’s garden.

The film is set in the 1930s in the USSR. The film tells about one day of the construction of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works. The heroes of the film are simple construction workers who are burning at work. Upon learning that their colleagues in Kharkov have set a record, they mobilize to break it. The entire construction site was engulfed in immense socialist competition. The teams are ready to complete the work on time at any cost. A Moscow journalist who has come to cover the scale of the great construction project is looking for the hero of his report...