Yuri Bragin, after a year-long business trip, where he, as part of an investigation team, was investigating a high-profile case, returns to St. Petersburg. When he returns, he learns that the current head of the First Investigation Department of the First Directorate of the State Investigation Department, Vadim Maltsev, is retiring. With a high degree of probability, it is Bragin who will be offered his place. But Yuri is not a careerist and the position of the boss is not the goal of his life. A talented investigator likes to do "live work" more. And now he is again sent on a business trip. This time in one of the cities of the Leningrad region, where two girls were killed with a difference of a week. Here, in a small town, everyone knows each other, and this complicates the search for the criminal.

In this dreamlike film, a nameless father and his son, Aleksei, live together in an apartment in St. Petersburg. Aleksei's mother has died and consequently the two have a very close relationship. When Aleksei acquires a girlfriend, she refuses to take a back seat to his bond with his dad, and breaks up with him. Aleksei is also experiencing nightmares, dreading separation from his father to be a part of the military as his father was.