The Stepmother

Unexpected news reaches the household of Pavel Olevantsev. A daughter he had by another woman has been left an orphan. Pavel did not know the child existed, and there was no way his wife could have known. Deciding to bring the child home is not easy. The harder part comes after: the girl warming to them, finding the taste of childhood again, and coming to believe she is not alone. The film tells this not as a story of charity but as a long process of adjustment. How the distance between a stepmother and a stepdaughter closes is the real subject. The story is adapted from the novel of the same name by Mariya Khalfina. Village life stands in the ground of the story. Tatyana Doronina and Leonid Nevedomsky appear in Oleg Bondarev’s Soviet film, completed in 1973.