“This film discloses the responsibility adults bear towards children whom they abandon. This is a problem of society’s responsibility to its future. The war ended long ago, but the children’s homes were overflowing in the 1960s. When I found out about this, I was simply dumbfounded. I did not want to read the viewers a lecture, but hoped to affect them on an emotional level. This is one of my most beloved pictures. This is a motto of kindness, mercy, a message from man to the individual, this is the problem of a person’s responsibility to the future” (director Mikhail Litvyakov).