The script about loneliness, conformity and the impossibility of creative realization scared the editorial censorship at the studio, and then at Derzhkino. A lot of claims were made against him. The demands for amendments and endless additions and rewrites by the authors lasted for about a year. The original version of the title "Na pokhony!" ("To bow down!") was replaced by "To Dream and to Live". According to Pylyp Ilyenko, the director's eldest son, this name appeared "as a result of censor pressure." Censorship stopped the tape 40 times: at the stage of the literary script, director's, during film tests (the actors were not approved), filming, etc. The film catastrophically fell apart into fragments, into masterfully filmed, but unrelated scenes. The director called the finished version a "dead film".

The investigation of a complex, complicated case of the murder of an engineer, a former prisoner of a Nazi concentration camp. The criminal, one of the executioners of this camp, did not escape retribution.

A young man from the city falls in love with a girl from the country side. She is not accepted by the village community: people think she is a witch.

Train driver suddenly felt sick and train itself is not quite fine. Without a driver it runs unstoppable and now it's passengers are who should save a train and their own lives.