Ilia, a 20-year-old promising rapper, arrives in a big city to win in a battle. And immediately he becomes one of the top battlers, having captured the public with his sincerity and desire to win. Everybody assures him of a great future. But Ilia meets his first love, a common girl who becomes involved in the criminal business of the city moguls.

Dovlatov charts six days in the life of a brilliant, ironic writer who saw far beyond the rigid limits of 70s Soviet Russia. Sergei Dovlatov fought to preserve his own talent and decency with poet and writer Joseph Brodsky, while watching his artist friends got crushed by the iron-willed state machinery.