About the title
Based on Vadim Shefner's novella "Sister of Sorrow." Tolya Kovrigin, a former orphanage boy nicknamed Chukhna, is 18 years old. He and his friends, Kostya Sinyavy and Volodya Shkilet, share a room on Vasilyevsky Island in the most beautiful city on earth — Leningrad. Sinyavy loves to party and flirt with girls he calls "kitten-darlings." Shkilet writes poetry and dreams of enrolling in a military academy. They walk about, drink wine, argue, get jealous, dance foxtrots, believe in their happy future, and ignore every sign of the coming catastrophe. It is the white nights of late spring 1940. The world stands on the threshold of war. And Chukhna meets the love of his life — Lyolya. The front, the siege, the death of those closest to him, and inevitable growing up all lie ahead. But for now they are young and carefree — happy as they will never be again. The story unfolds in two time periods at once — the 1960s and the 1940s. In the 1960s, the protagonist is no longer just Chukhna, but the successful playwright Anatoly Kovrigin.