Kirill Nenashev

Russian Federation, May 6, 2012. On the eve of the ceremony of inauguration of Vladimir Putin, elected for a third term, the police brutally repressed a march of protest over the lack of freedom existing in the nation. Some people believed that this demonstration would be the beginning of a peaceful revolution, but it was the day when silence and fear won the game. Realize what happens when a person has too much power in his hands.

Masha and Ilya were born around the time Vladimir Putin came to power. The girl and the boy, just like their friends, wanted to live in a free, democratic and open country. Fighting for freedom and their future, our heroes organise discussion clubs and protest actions, participate in pickets and give lectures, support their comrades who are behind bars, try to change the minds of their relatives, friends and ordinary passers-by in various Russian cities. "Moscow, come out!" shouts Masha at a rally. But Moscow does not come out, it is busy and in a hurry. The centuries-old machine of unfreedom sweeps the boys away. War breaks out. And we all find ourselves in another reality.

It's 2018. Russia has just elected its President. A new, old President. Nothing will change during the next six years, and, at first glance, you just have to accept it. This is the way people think, whilst heroes feel otherwise. Russia has many heroes. This film is about them.

Konstantin Stupin or just Stupa - rock-n-roller from Orel. He is 44 years old, we take him out of the madhouse and start making a film. Stupa in the last years of the existence of the USSR, as a schoolboy, decided to make music. He became the leader of the Oryol group Night cane: performances at school with songs about hell, sex, drugs, with texts like “take the Communist Party forgotten by everyone, drop two letters and get the SS”. Then the big scenes of the city and, as a result, the “Festival of Hopes”, organized by Artemy Troitsky, where the Night Cane, being the only non-Moscow group, receives a prize of audience sympathy. The texts for the festival have already become different, much deeper and more serious, but with constant protest in content and form.

Many years ago, Ivan Petrov, the director of a major transportation company, left for work one morning and never returned. Today, his son, young hipster Vasily, who has just enrolled at Moscow State University, sets out on a long journey across Moscow to the company’s headquarters to uncover the fate of his father.