The action begins in Moscow, continues in the Crimea and takes place in the Donbass. These three points, three locations are important, semantic ancestors of historical events that shocked the whole world.

After a ten year long stay in West Germany, Max returns to the Soviet Union to visit his deadly ill father in Leningrad. There he finds a friend in a man who calls himself Igor and he begins a love-affair with the deafmute Lena. Around Max' relationship to his father, Igor and Lena, losely held episodes give a many fasetted portrait of Leningrad and its inhabitants. In the eyes of the returning Max, the city is at once well-known and foreign. Lyrically saturated images and sophisticated editing contributes to making the film an expressive description of a changing city.

Gera, a respected director of TV commercials, thinks he's capable of creating a fiction movie masterpiece. Predictably, he ends up with owning money to a mafia and no film to show for. To make his life even crazier he falls in love with a girl who belongs to the boss of mafia.