Based on a true story, Arthur – a former military doctor – leads the quiet life of a widower in a mountain village in Dagestan. He then learns that his only daughter, Maryam, has been recruited by a terrorist organization and ran away to Syria. The father decides to follow her, willing to do what it takes to save her.
They have been abandoned in a world adorned with concepts such as family, friendship, love, and opportunities. In search of answers to their questions, they devour themselves like a chemical substance that corrodes the world around, in order to eventually learn not to listen but to hear, not to look but to see. And to find their way.
Ivan, a successful oncologist who has created a cure for cancer, discovers suddenly that by an ironical twist of fate he is terminally ill. He realizes that he has one chance to correct the mistake he made a long time ago, and leaves his family to go to another city to the woman he loved all his life, hoping to spend the last night with her...
Lawyers Andrew and Benjamin are friends who share a lot, but their work puts them on opposite sides. Their trials do not occur in this life but in the afterlife. They are members of the Sky Court deciding where a human soul should go after death- Heaven or Hell. Unexpectedly in one case personal interests of Andrew interfere: the man who made the proposal to his widow is on trial.
Following a brawl, Captain Ignat, who is traumatised by the death of his daughter, is ordered together with a regular soldier to find a deserter and bring him back via Moscow to stand before a military court. Although they locate the young soldier, their journey across the wintry moloch that is Moscow is slow and tortuous. Before long, the unlikely trio find themselves drawn into a chaotic maelstrom of violence, corruption, criminality, degradation and squalidness. In the face of the monstrous malaise and everyday horror of life in Russia, the gradual breakdown of the film’s anti-hero becomes a metaphor for Russian society.
In the year 2020, a group of wealthy Moscovites travel to an abandoned astrophysics complex, rumoured to have enough power to halt the process of aging.