In the year of Leo Tolstoy's death, Dziga Vertov, an unknown boy from Bialystok, was 14 years old. The elder of Yasnaya Polyana could not know either the name or the work of the documentary filmmaker, the founder of non-fiction cinema as a high art. However, the film is structured as a parallel movement of creative aspirations, views and biographies of two artists. In his best paintings ("Kinoglaz", "Man with a Movie Camera", "Symphony of Donbass" and others), Vertov followed the basic aesthetic principles of Tolstoy, supported and developed the traditions of Russian classical literature on the screen. One of the main episodes of the film is a screen story about the Moscow agricultural exhibition of 1923, which reveals the common focus of the writer and director's efforts.