The village of Matera, located on an island in the middle of the Angara , will be flooded with the waters of a future reservoir . The villagers have long been warned that they will have to move to a new village, but the old people are holding out to the last. Pavel Pinigin was appointed to supervise the move. He does it with a heavy heart, since he himself has lived in the village for almost his entire life. His boss Vorontsov has no doubts - he knows that everything is being done for a lofty goal: the construction of a new hydroelectric power station and new cities around it will arise. A team of burners arrives on the island: they remove crosses from the graves; cut down tall trees; and burn empty houses to prepare the village for flooding. The collapse of the world familiar to them from childhood terrifies the old-timers. One of the symbols of Matera is a huge century-old tree, which the brigade tries to destroy several times - first to cut it down, then to knock it down with a bulldozer, then to burn it. However, even the charred one rises above the island, as before. 

In Russian with switchable English subtitles. Approx. 121 mins.