The Red Snowball Tree

Egor Prokudin (Vasiliy Shukshin) has just served his term and wants one thing from the outside: to meet Lyuba (Lidiya Fedoseyeva-Shukshina), the village woman he has written to from prison. Shukshin directs himself and sends Egor into the country, where he takes work and makes friends, and starts to believe he might leave his old life behind. Lyuba is kind and plainspoken, and what grows between them is careful and real.