Oleg Niryan

In a nostalgic Moscow of 1976, an unlucky actor meets a charismatic writer, a living classic of Soviet literature, who turns his life into a tragicomic farce with the artistic bohemia, foreign-currency prostitutes, the KGB staff and agents of the CIA.

Today’s twenty-something Russians are the first generation in the country’s post-communist history to have grown up free. Their twenties are the age of freedom, of fast-changing events and intense emotions. Perhaps only at this age they can live a whole life in one day. A young girl and her two accident companions walk halfway around St.-Petersburg; they flirt and tease each other, and for ninety minutes they act out a real-time romantic drama. This stroll is full of laughter and tears against a backdrop of the hustle and bustle of the streets.

This is the story of the poet Osip Mandelstam, recreated at the intersection of the arts and genres: puppet theater, design, computer graphics, documentary. The rebellious spirit of Mandelstam's poetry sounded a challenge to the authorities, and their author was destroyed by a state machine - he died in a transit camp. Much of what he wrote could not have been preserved had it not been for her husband Nadezhda, who taught his works by heart, copied manually-in anticipation of times when they could be published.

Three old fiends decide to take vacation from the everyday life and join the archeological expedition.