Within the context of the virgin land reclamation project, in the immense steppes where new communities were being created around the flowering sovchoz, a truck, the only means of transportation for reaching large urban centers, is the central setting of the story: heading from a small village to a town six hundred kilometers away, the truck is the place where the passengers tell their stories. Within this choral framework the figure of Alënka emerges. She is a cheerful and reserved girl ready to brace anything in order to eat her favorite ice cream, eskimo. She tells her story, listens, is moved and mindfully participates in the adult world with the same spontaneity and seriousness of playing with her peers. And at the end of the trip she feels older. An awareness that transforms into a gesture of love and poetry: in the final sequence of the film, Alënka finds the child she met briefly during the trip. After carefully adjusting the new kerchief on her head, she offers him the second eskimò purchased with her saved up rubles. The long close up that Barnet reserves for the two children is much more akin to the newborn cinema of the “thaw” period than one would think. Šukšin, about to debut as director, is one of the extraordinary actors performing in this film.