The film is based on the true events that took place in the Oryol prison in September 1941, when 154 prisoners, later found innocent, were shot without trial. The film uses dramatizations and staged footage.
Prisoners wake up in a common cell of the Oryol prison, get up, get dressed (staging).
Photograph by H.G. Rakovsky, who served his sentence in the Oryol Central.
Staged scenes and staging: the boots of an NKVD officer walking along the prison corridor.
Prisoners are sitting on the floor in prison cells.
Faces of applauding prisoners.
A girl playing hopscotch on the floor of a prison cell, the girl's face.
A prisoner playing the pipe is walking down the prison stairs.
Prisoners, holding their hands behind their heads, are walking down the stairs.
A girl playing hopscotch, shadow play (top).
Boots of an NKVD officer dictating a list of those sentenced to death to a typist.
An NKVD officer dictating a list of those sentenced.
The typist's face.
The face of an NKVD officer pacing back and forth.
A rat on a prison windowsill.
The hand of a prisoner tapping out a transmission on the wall of the "prison telegraph".
Photograph of prisoner Maria Spiridonova, texts of messages.
Faces of prisoners.
A concert of amateur performances by prisoners in a cell.
A prisoner dancing around a seated cellmate.
A woman dancing in a cell.
The face of a prisoner.
Women's legs in rough shoes and torn stockings, a woman in a prison cell stroking a rat sitting on her lap.
1989
Moscow
Staging and staged filming: hands of prisoners sending messages to each other via the "prison telegraph", texts of the messages.
Faces of prisoners, indignant and hysterical.
A prisoner praying on his knees.
Faces of prisoners.
Prisoners in a cell.
Female prisoners in a cell chewing bread.
A hand turning the handle of a loudspeaker.
A cigarette in a typist's mouth.
The face of an NKVD officer walking back and forth and dictating a list of those sentenced.
The carriage of a typewriter.
The face of a typist.
People with their hands behind their heads descending the stairs.
A crying woman on the floor of a prison cell.
Amusement of prisoners in a cell, games.
Punishment of the loser.
An NKVD officer dictates a list of those sentenced to a typist.
The typist smokes a cigarette, types.
An NKVD officer puts papers in a table, blows his nose.
A record on a gramophone, music.
Games and entertainment of prisoners in a cell.
Photograph of Maria Spiridonova, shot near Orel in September 1941. Photograph of Spiridonova swirls in the air between the lights.
Photographs flying out of a barred window.
1989
Moscow
Staged and re-enacted footage: a photograph of H.G. Rakovsky, executed near Orel in September 1941, swirls in the air between the lights.
A couple dancing in a prison cell (above), photographs falling to the floor.
Hands folding an "airplane" from a photograph of M. Spiridonova.
A typist launches paper "airplanes".
A woman's hands are on a man's back.
A woman is banging herself against the wall of a prison cell, an air raid siren sounds off-screen.
Prisoners dancing in a cell.
Collapsing plaster.
Prisoners in a cell during an air raid, plaster falling from above.
Hands of a prisoner playing an imaginary piano.
An inscription on the wall of a prison cell.
A stream of water washes away photographs of Rakovsky and Spiridonova.
Water-flooded photographs of prisoners executed near Orel in September 1941. People with their hands raised behind their heads are descending the stairs.
Typewritten text about the execution of 154 prisoners of the Oryol prison without a sentence on September 10, 1941. Newsreel: faces of homeless children and teenagers of the 1920s, pupils of the juvenile colony.
Staging and staged filming: an empty prison cell.
Empty rooms in the apartments of an abandoned house, a glowing lampshade under the ceiling, a view from the window onto the street, passers-by on the street.
1989
Moscow
Autumn