In search for a better life, Anna leaves her Ukrainian village for a big city. Three years later, she finds herself working two jobs and spending most of her days in a rooming house inhabited by broken people.

The film tells about a band of demobilized Red Army men and two civilians who cross a Middle Asian desert. They are forced to do battle with superior forces of Basmachi rebels for the dry draw-well.

A film adaptation of the short story of the same name by Guy de Maupassant. The action takes place in the XIX century. Franco-Prussian War of 1870. A group of French bourgeois leaves in a stagecoach from Rouen occupied by Prussian troops. Along with them comes one attractive demimonde lady. The only way to get out is to persuade her, nicknamed "Ball-of-Fat" a la "Boule-de-Suif" to satisfy the lust of the head of the gendarmerie...

A story about tragic events in France during the German occupation in WWII.