Siberia. Late autumn. In taiga, in the deserted village there lives an old man Ivan & his seven-year-old grandson Leshia. A pack of feral dogs devours everything alive in the neighborhood. One of these dogs is Leshia's best friend. Sometimes their relative uncle Yuri brings food to them. Once on his way back from Ivan's village uncle Yuri is attacked by dogs & perishes. Ivan & Leshia stay without supply. Once Leshia witnesses Ivan shooting at 'his' dog & runs away. The old Man finds him in a dry well, but he fails to get him out on his own. Ivan sets out through taiga in search of help. Now the dogs are hunting him... And the boy is waiting for his father...

The girl cut off her braid and went wherever she looked - to look for the groom. She is joined by a strange old man dressed in a transparent raincoat. There is a scythe about three blades on Grandfather's shoulder. He persistently pulls the girl "to the church" - to baptize someone, and the "first comer" should be the godfather. "I can't go to church," the girl objects. - There's a young, funny father there. I will laugh at him..." So she follows the old man past a blooming meadow, along a fast, cold river... Weaves a wreath along the way, decorating it with colored ostrich feathers caught from the water. A lot of events will happen along the way - one is more incomprehensible than the other, and then there will be a wedding and girls in embroidered sundresses with songs will carry garlands of hay on their shoulders with ribbons, red plows will float down the river, and in the foreground is a girl with a groom.

The film takes place in a small abandoned monastery, standing on a high, steep bank of the Volga. The hero of the film, the architect, having learned that the empty monastery is facing a thorough reconstruction, decides to capture it alone and prepare design documentation for the restoration of this monument of history and culture. But the monastery turns out to be far from empty. Besides him, a strange old woman also lives in the house. At night, members of the society "Informal Word" gather in the church of the monastery and hold discussions about the historical and spiritual paths of Russia. When drawing up a detailed plan of the monastery, the hero manages to discover hidden voids, similar to the voids of the pyramid of Cheops, and the cell of another mysterious inhabitant of the monastery — Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. The architect witnesses the re-burning of the second volume of "Dead Souls".

The invasion of a village in Byelorussia by German forces sends young Florya into the forest to join the weary Resistance fighters, against his family's wishes. There he meets a girl, Glasha, who accompanies him back to his village. On returning home, Florya finds his family and fellow peasants massacred. His continued survival amidst the brutal debris of war becomes increasingly nightmarish, a battle between despair and hope.

A judge is devastated after the death of his wife and is neglectful of his children. His son befriends the children of a street beggar who live in an abandoned, derelict church. After his experience with his new friends, the young boy begins to feel sorry for his father and sympathizes with his loneliness.