Vera Matveeva used to be a schoolteacher, but now she is retired and lives with her granddaughter Elizaveta. Looking at her grandmother's photos of her students, the girl notices a smiling boy in one of them. The third boy in the fifth row was Vanya Belov. Her grandmother told her granddaughter many stories about his jokes and pranks. And Liza liked the boy. The girl sensed something in him that her teacher did not remember: Ivan Belov became a hero and died a brave death in 1945. The television film "Third in the Fifth Row" is based on the novel of the same name by Anatoly Alexin.