Kotelnitch is a small village 800 kilometers east of Moscow. The filmmaker initially went there in search of a Hungarian WW II prisoner who spent 55 years, forgotten by everyone, in a psychiatric hospital. He returns to the village to make a documentary. His second and last visit is to bury a young woman he'd met there and who was killed by a madman. He realizes that these three film shoots, spread over two years, were telling a story - the story of his family.