Mafia kidnaps an investigator's little son after he discovers massive thefts on a local shoe factory. With the help of his three old friends, two cops and a newspaper reporter he struggles to rescue his son and close the case at the same time.

Vanya, an officious and dutiful child, grows into Ivan Shponka, a meek, paranoid lieutenant, then retires back to his provincial estate. Only one incident could make a crease in his lazy existence – his domineering aunt's urges to get him married against his own desire.

About the early years of the life of the philosopher and writer Alexander Herzen, about his first and unrequited love, about the throwing of youth and growing up of a young critic and revolutioner. According to his father, he comes from an ancient Russian family, and his mother was a simple German woman. As an illegitimate son, he was not given the name of his father, Yakovlev. In his youth, he was fond of the ideas of freedom, for which it is not a pity to fight, which even then was close to the ideals of the revolution...

A film-play based on three stories by Australian writers John Morrison and F. Hardy.