A music teacher is trying to organize a choir in the school he works in.

Based on the famous fairytale "The Tinderbox" by Hans Christian Andersen. The main character of the film is a puppeteer who lives in a poor and gray world. He composes a fairy tale in which he himself, in the guise of a brave soldier, finds a flint and is helped by a kind wizard. The soldier falls in love with a spoiled, capricious princess who, as befits a princess, poses riddles to her numerous suitors. Her father, the king, is eager to see the soldier as her husband, as he believes the soldier has a great deal of gold. In the fairy tale, everything ends well, but in real life, not so much. "But life is not a fairy tale," his beloved girl says to him as she bids him farewell.

Katerina Izmailova is a filmization of Dmitry Shostakovich's long-suppressed 1936 opera. Galina Vishnevskaya stars as Katerina, a bored 19th century farm wife. At the behest of her grungy lover, Katerina murders her husband and her father-in-law. She and her new beau are both sent to Siberia, where the lover almost immediately takes up with a younger woman. Banned by Stalin for its bleak portrait of Soviet life, Katerina Izmailova was not given a Russian staging for over 40 years; its Metropolitan Opera debut did not occur until 1994. Dmitri Shostakovich also wrote the screenplay for the screen version of Katerina Izmailova.

1920年代，苏联逐渐从革命和内战中恢复过来，但全国共有近4百万流浪青少年徘徊街头，给社会治安带来很大影响。于是契卡决定在各地建立专门学校，改造这些流浪儿童，帮助他们重新融入社会。彼得格勒的“陀思妥耶夫斯基公社学校”（“陀校”）就是一所这样的机构。然而被送进来的学生却都负隅顽抗，在学校制造各种事端。校长维克托·尼古拉耶维奇·索罗金（“维尼索”）却决定不和他们硬碰硬，而是顺势而为，春风化雨。于是，学员们成立了“陀校共和国”，准备放手大干一场……