Synopsis

Based on a novel by Evgeny Zamyatin. In 1920s Petrograd, childless couple Trofim and his wife Sofya adopt their late neighbor’s daughter, thirteen-year-old Ganka, only for Ganka to begin a scandalous affair with her foster father. When Sofya’s despair over the incest drives her to murder Ganka with an axe and conceal the body during a flood, Trofim reports her “missing” to the police, who never recover the corpse. Sofya later becomes pregnant, confesses to the killing, and Trofim, moved by love and guilt, offers to take the blame, though the skeptical investigator doubts any crime occurred.