After graduating from the institute, biologists Chernov and Bochkin go to the tundra and organize a wildlife preserve. Experiencing constant resistance from the local authorities, Chernov cannot stand the tense situation and decides to return to Moscow. Bochkin regards his friend's act as a betrayal…

A woman who cleans toilets has dreams of meeting a lover and finding happiness.Will these dreams, in the winter of a USSR in its last years, come true?

Sisin, a forty-year-old writer, gets on the train and goes out of town. In the car, he is surrounded by strange passengers, some of whom resemble famous Russian writers: Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Kuprin... Surreal visions, hidden desires, fears, and anxieties arise in Sisin's imagination. Love, career, and life itself seem stupid and meaningless to him.

The dissolute way of life of Mariya Egorova, nicknamed "Magdalene", abruptly ends - her friend, driving her into debt and putting her "on the counter", taking her passport, through a pimp she knows, offers her to work as a prostitute. During the conversation, Mariya breaks the pimp's head, ends up in the police station, from where she escapes. Now bandits and the police are looking for her, and she urgently needs to find money to buy a passport and leave the city with her daughter.

An employee of the Berlin Museum of Transport arrives on vacation with his son Peter in St. Petersburg, intending to make a video about the local museum of transport. Here, the heroes learn about the existence of a rare exhibit — an ancient steam locomotive and begin to search for it.