In the 1930’s, the workers of the underground, headed by brigades of writers, are in charge to write in real time "the history of the Moscow Metro". Based on their narratives, partially unpublished, the film recounts the first lines construction of the most beautifiul underground in the world, in the light of this "big literary Utopia", stoped by the purges of 1937-38.

Julien ia a young student on a traineeship at the Departmental Archives. While he always believed that his grandfather had been a member of the French Resistance, he has doubts about his family's past. When he discovers that what he has been told is not quite the truth, he uncovers a family secret that leads to the collapse of an entire value system that had been maintained by a silent complicity.

Capt. Eugenio arrives in a remote castle to take charge of a unit guarding a nameless prisoner. No one knows much about the inmate as he is held in a forlorn tower. When the captain's wife Adele tries to shake her melancholia by playing the piano, she finds -- much to her surprise -- that she's being accompanied by violin music coming from the prison cell.

The charismatic criminal Dobermann, who got his first gun when he was christened, leads a gang of brutal robbers. After a complex and brutal bank robbery, they are being hunted by the Paris police. The hunt is led by the sadistic cop Christini, who only has one goal: to catch Dobermann at any cost.