After a ten year long stay in West Germany, Max returns to the Soviet Union to visit his deadly ill father in Leningrad. There he finds a friend in a man who calls himself Igor and he begins a love-affair with the deafmute Lena. Around Max' relationship to his father, Igor and Lena, losely held episodes give a many fasetted portrait of Leningrad and its inhabitants. In the eyes of the returning Max, the city is at once well-known and foreign. Lyrically saturated images and sophisticated editing contributes to making the film an expressive description of a changing city.

Shortly after the war, Kaliningrad is populated by Russian newcomers and becomes a bleak home to heroes whose inevitable slide towards a tragedy is somewhat similar to the fates of protagonists of classical Russian literature. The film portraying their story had been shot over a period of more than 10 years and doesn't falter eye to eye with physical pain.