As the film opens, we are placed at an elegant ball in imperial St. Petersburg where Vera, an exuberant youth excitedly tells her dance partner, a dashing young cadet named Sergei, that she will soon fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher. Her life’s goal will not be carried out in the comfort of the city; she will be traveling many miles away to a remote Siberian village. We soon learn there is more to Sergei than meets the eye when the Tsar’s police suspect him of revolutionary activity and arrest him that very evening. Vera’s teaching career gets off to an inauspicious beginning as the locals mock her city naïveté, demonstrated by her failure to bring along a proper pair of felt boots to guard against the notoriously harsh winters. These attitudes towards the newcomer change however when they witness her courageously interrupting an episode of domestic violence involving a village bully of whom even the rough and tumble male residents are afraid. Gradually the locals see the value of the teacher’s contributions to their children who in turn begin instructing their younger chums on their own, even fashioning a globe out of twigs and holding impromptu lessons in the fields.

DVD-R is in Russian with switchable English subtitles. Approx. 98 min. See film sample for audio and video quality!

<