Based on a real postwar incident, the film is about an army unit trying to dispose unexploded bombs to save a small town.

As the army unit concludes its mission the population returns to the town as the bombs are simultaneously destroyed at the safe site.

There Will Be No Leave Today was suggested by the State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) to Tarkovsky and Gordon as a practical exercise for the two film students.

The main objective for Tarkovsky and Gordon was not to produce a masterpiece, but to learn the basics of filmmaking through making an uncomplicated and easy-to-consume film.

The major part of the budget was provided by Soviet Central Television as the film was to be aired on the anniversary day of the capitulation of Nazi Germany in World War II.

[1] Untypically for Tarkovsky There Will Be No Leave Today resembles a Soviet propaganda film, with heroic soldiers and the grateful population of the town.

The film was aired first on Victory Day, 9 May 1959, on Soviet television despite the competition from a similar Lenfilm production based on the same incident.

The negatives of the film only reappeared in the mid-1990s when the director of the Moscow State Central Cinema Museum, Naum Kleiman, discovered them.