Based on the screenplay by Yuri Nagibin, it told a fictionalized story of a real-life Belarusian partisan Kirill Orlovsky (named Egor Trubnikov in the movie) who lost his arm during the war, then headed one of the ruined kolkhozes and turned it into the most prosperous countryside.
The movie also featured a number of themes unusual for the cinema of that era, including post-war hunger, bureaucracy that prevented quicker recovery, lack of men and repressive methods of NKVD.
[6] It was awarded a prize at the All-Union Film Festival and named the best movie of 1965 by the readers of the Soviet Screen magazine.
Saltykov made another three movies based on Nagibin's screenplays: Woman's World (1967), Director (1969) and The Ivanov Family (1975).
It became one of the leaders of the 1968 box office (4th place with 49.6 million viewers) and the 38th most viewed film of the Soviet Union.
[10] Director was dedicated to Ivan Likhachov (named Aleksey Zworykin in the movie) who established the automotive industry in the Soviet Union, headed ZiL, and who happened to be Nagibin's father-in-law.
According to the writer Nikolai Konyaev, in 1993 Saltykov approached him with documents from previously closed Soviet archives regarding general Andrey Vlasov known for his Nazi collaboration during the World War II.