Moscow, summer of 1953. Tanya, an eleven-year old girl, meets a boy, Mitya. Mitya and his family have just returned from exile in the Russian Far East. Tanya learns that Mitya had to leave behind his best friend, a dog called Hector. Mitya is eager for Hector to join him in Moscow, but the adults declare it impossible - a large city is no place for a dog. In an attempt to prove the adults wrong and convince them to bring over Hector, Mitya and Tanya decide to create the perfect home for him - a dog's paradise in an empty sealed room they find in the building...

It is August 1941. With the battle line far away in the east, three soldiers who have managed to escape from captivity find it difficult to hide: the territory is occupied by the enemy. The local woods are not safe: you can easily get embogged. Are the villagers loyal? Nobody can say. There is an old man who offers to help them. Is he reliable enough? He may kill them or report them to the local German authorities. Anything may happen, but one of them, the sniper, is his son who is his youngest, his dearest.

A tragic story of love and loneliness - this is the unknown life of the great Russian writer Ivan Bunin. The confused love story that involved Bunin, his wife Vera, the young poet Galina Plotnikova, opera singer Marga Kovtun and literary man Leonid Gurov. A work of great honesty and piercing psychology.