The Humorist is a film about a week in the life of Boris Arkadiev, a fictional Soviet stand-up comedian. Boris is tormented not only by external oppression and censorship but also by his own insecurities that poison all his relationships.

A fight en route to an airport leads an ordinary Moscow couple to split on a whim. With Nikita ending up in Thailand and Zhenya in Berlin, both find themselves in two separate love triangles, inadvertently causing chaos in others' relationships as they attempt to fix theirs. But even continents apart, their lives turn out to be more intricately connected than they realize.