They had rediscovered documentary footage from the period, fragments of which they intended to use in the course of the film. They had already interviewed the generals and marshals who were still alive. What remained to be filmed was, in the eyes of the director, a very important episode. In this scene the principal role fell to Demidov. The director saw it like this: after the dachas on the outskirts of Moscow and the spacious Moscow apartments, where the retired marshals, buttoned up tight in their uniforms, command armies and juggle with divisions in their memory, there appear the twisting streets of Borissov and a truck splashed with mud driving into the entrance of a garage. A man gets down from the truck, without turning toward the camera, wearing a battered cap and an old leather jacket. He crosses the yard, littered with scrap iron, and makes his way over to the little office building. A somewhat metallic voice-over raps out the citation of the Hero of the Soviet Union: "By the decree of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, for heroism and bravery displayed in battle…"

The truck driver hands in some papers at the office, nods to a colleague, shakes hands with another and goes home.

In the course of this scene Demidov's voice, a simple, informal voice, talks about the Battle of Stalingrad. The sequence of shots that follows is in the context of a home: the celebratory meal, a spread-out copy of Pravda on a set of shelves; yellowing photographs of the postwar years on the wall.

But the high point of the film was elsewhere. From time to time the story of this modest hero "who saved the world from the brown plague," as the commentary put it, breaks off. The Soviet foreign correspondent in one or another European capital appears on the screen, stopping passersby and asking them: "Tell me, what does the name of Stalingrad mean to you?" The passersby hesitate, make inept replies, and laughingly recall Stalin.