The Red Snowball Tree

Yegor comes out of prison and goes to the village of Lyuba, the woman he had been writing to from inside. He has never seen her, only exchanged letters. He finds work, the village takes him in, he genuinely attaches himself to her, and he decides to leave the thieving behind. His old associates do not let him. Vasily Shukshin wrote it, directed it and played Yegor himself; Lyuba is played by his wife, Lidiya Fedoseyeva. It became one of the most-watched films ever released in the Soviet Union. Shukshin died months after it opened, in the autumn of that same year, at forty-five. It was the last film he directed.