Dark scenes from Russia in 2004, that reveal the anger and despair of ordinary Russians who feel abandoned by the state infrastructure: Old pensioners cling to one of the last communal apartments in the center of St. Petersburg. Friends and family make sense of the death of a poisoned man outside of St. Petersburg. A parent, mourning the loss of a son killed in Chechnya, confronts a military representative north of the Arctic Circle. A young gay man drinks himself to oblivion in an apartment in St. Petersburg.