St. Petersburg, 1860. After a member of the imperial family is assassinated, Fyodor Dostoevsky meets one of the conspirators, who reveals that his comrades are planning another attack to the Tsar's life. Plagued by debts and struggling to finish his latest novel, Dostoevsky must act fast to call off the plot.

As in an endless sequence shot, the stories of some friends intertwine: Paolo is a writer who can't finish his novel due to perfectionism, Maria, his girlfriend, feels neglected and enters the circle of "protégés" of a schoolmate of Paolo, Francesco. Michela, a friend of Maria, falls in love with Marco while Paolo's father meets with Petra, a high-class prostitute.

A reconstruction of the bankruptcy of the Banco Ambrosiano bank and its liaisons with the Vatican and the Masonry through its president Roberto Calvi, notoriously found dead under the Blackfriars Bridge in London in June 1982.