Zhanna und Lyosha are survivors. The couple, now in their mid-thirties, became heroin addicts in the turbulent years of upheaval in Russia. They know their days are numbered, and pit their frail zest for life and gallows humor against this fact. The film draws on these moments and offers an intimate portrayal of a fragile and ambivalent love affair.

Sonja Wolf is ten years old, when she emigrates with her parents – renowned Jewish doctors and fervent communists - from Berlin to Moscow in 1934. The family's sole survivor of the Stalinist repressions of the 30s, she is deported to Kazakhstan in 1941 because of her German nationality. Sonja's daughter Ester Noter, born in exile in Kazakhstan in 1944, talks about the life and survival of her mother.