In the early thirties, the bare steppes of the Urals were transformed at breakneck speed into a blast-furnace complex and a city was raised out of the ground. Although volunteers from Eastern and Western Europe were involved in the project, most of the work was done by forced labour. Magnitogorsk was a model project to demonstrate the energy with which the first five-year plan of the communist state-controlled economy was put into operation. In 1932, Joris Ivens was invited by the Meshrapom Studio in Moscow to made a film about the building of the Soviet Union. He chose Magnitogorsk as an example of how the new world and the new man were to be forged, and the resulting film, Song of the heroes, encapsulates the prevailing ideology of the period.

Pieter Jan Smit's documentary Magnitogorsk: forging the new man sets out to find those who built and resided in the city of steel and to talk to them about their ideals yesterday and today. Joris Ivens lauded the enthusiasm with which the blast-furnace project was brought to fruition. Magnitogorsk shows us what became of the heroes of Ivens' film. Schaigutdin and Fahime belong to the second generation of residents, and their personal histories overlap with that of the city. They arrived with their parents around 1930, and their story is typical of many others. It is the story of 35,000 people who were deported to Magnitogorsk to realise an immense project. This new city with its towering blast furnaces had come to symbolise the building of the Soviet Union. Besides the story of Schaigutdin and Fahime's generation, Magnitogorsk: forging the new man also sets out to find out about the ideals of the younger generation today.