Evgenia, a divorced mother, is devoted to her only son, Sasha. When she lets him go on vacation with his father, he comes back a changed person and tells her that he does not want to live with her anymore.

Suppressed by the Soviet Union for sixteen years, Kira Muratova’s celebrated second film is a melancholic, monochrome study of a complicated mother-son relationship. Aching with maternal love, loss, and longing, the film remains a searing and tender portrayal of the agonies of motherhood.