During the 1920s, many impoverished Jews searching for a better life made their way to Birobidzhan, the Soviet Jewish Autonomous Region on the Chinese border. This melodrama tells the story of a Jewish family's immigration to Birobidzhan and their experiences as settlers on a collective farm in the area.

A 1945 Soviet war film which, along with the second part of Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible was harshly criticized by Andrei Zhdanov and banned. A version of the film, released in 1956 during the Khrushchev Thaw, was disowned by director Grigori Kozintsev because the reediting was done without his participation.

Based on the true story of Russian pilot Valeri Chkalov (1904 - 1938), who set several long-distance flight records. Chkalov and co-pilots Baidukov and Belyakov altogether had accomplished several nonstop long-distance flights. In June 1937, Chkalov set the world record, covering 12,000 kilometers in 63 hours of nonstop flight from Moscow to Vancouver, Washington, flying over the North Pole.