- The year 1829. Nikolay Gogol, a young Third Section clerk, is desperate: his own books seem shallow and mediocre, so he keeps buying en tire print runs just to burn them all. He is suffering from violent epileptic seizures and struggles to keep on working. Investigator Yakov Guro accidentally witnesses one such fit and…
- June, 1941. A small Russian village at the border is living its everyday life - people work, love, squabble, make plans for the future. The war changes all plans, tears families apart, the first victims fall... Some Russian straggling soldiers who managed to stay alive after the first onslaught of the German army make …