War correspondent Lopatin takes a 20-day-leave from his hard work at the front in 1942. He travels to faraway Tashkent to meet the family of the killed soldier and visit the film set of the screen adaptation of his war-time stories. Lopatin also manages to walk the streets of Tashkent, take part in a factory workers' meeting and have a short-lived love affair. Although with no bombings and fighting, the city dwellers breathe the atmosphere of the ongoing war.
as Major Vasily Nikolaevich Lopatin
as Nina
as Yuri Stroganov
as Zinaida Antonovna, artistic director of the theater
as Pasha Rubtsov
as Rubtsova
as Vyacheslav
as Xenia Sergeevna, former wife of Lopatin
as Woman with clocks
as Lidiya, actress playing a female sniper
as Narrator (voice), screenwriter
as Commander
as Usman Yusupov, secretary of the Central Committee