Gradually, the timeline shifts, and the Red Guards are replaced by contemporary figures—a group of young people, and later, a recently discharged soldier.

Sergey’s father died on the front during the Great Patriotic War, and he now lives with his mother and sister in a communal apartment near Zastava Ilyicha Square.

Together, they attend a poetry evening at the Polytechnic Museum, where prominent poets of the era—Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky, Rimma Kazakova, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Mikhail Svetlov, Bella Akhmadulina, and Bulat Okudzhava—recite their works.

I Am Twenty is notable for its often dramatic camera movements, handheld camerawork and heavy use of location shooting, often incorporating non-actors (including a group of foreign exchange students from Ghana and famous poets, among them Yevgeny Yevtushenko) and centering scenes around non-staged events (a May Day parade, a building demolition, a poetry reading).

I Am Twenty began production in 1959,[2] during the de-Stalinization period of the Khrushchev thaw, when Soviet society experienced several years of unprecedented freedom of speech.

At a speech in March 1963, Khrushchev personally attacked the film and denounced Khutsiev and his collaborators for "[thinking] that young people ought to decide for themselves how to live, without asking their elders for counsel and help.