Tertiary student Vasia Vasylkov receives the keys to the museum of various arts for one night from the watchman. The main requirement is that all exhibits must be in their places in the morning. But the main character, of course, does not obey the watchman's instructions, so he plunges into a whirlwind of magical adventures, meeting ghosts, Casanova, Assol, Dracula, Sleeping Beauty, Romeo, Red Riding Hood, and Snow Queen.

The events take place in the XIX century, in the Carpathian mountains. It is the screen adaptation of the novel by Hnat Khotkevych based on the legend of brave leaders who fought against the Austrian Habsburgs and the Polish magnates for the happiness and freedom of its people. And also it is a romantic story about a fatal overwhelming love.

It is evening, children are gathered around the fire, and the old miller begins to tell them a fairy tale. In his tale, Mykola, a bursak, goes to Mr. Adam to teach his daughter Khrystyna to read and write. But on the way to the manor, Mykola learns that the village has been invaded by evil spirits, werewolves, and air-breathers, and that Mr. Adam himself is in captivity. Mykola and Khrystyna decide to free the prisoners and the land from evil spirits, but they will have to go through many trials.

During an interesting era in the history of Eastern Europe when Russia, under Peter the Great, and Sweden, under King Charles XII, struggled for power, Ukraine was the pawn in the middle. In 1709, Ivan Mazepa, Hetman of Ukraine, which was part of the Russian Empire, signed a pact with the Swedish king promising to support Sweden in its war against Russia provided that Ukraine was given its independence.

The protagonist Andrii Dovzhenko finds out a horrible truth, that has been hidden in USSR for years - most of those accused of «anti-Soviet propaganda» were never sent to prison, but to special psychiatric hospitals with a diagnosis of "slow progressive schizophrenia". Andrii finds himself in a real hell of punitive psychiatry and faces a difficult choice - to cooperate with the KGB and return to his family, or to reveal the truth about dissidents tortured in such psychiatric hospitals. The script was based on the memoirs of Soviet dissidents who faced the brutality of a totalitarian system that used so-called "punitive psychiatry" as a weapon against free thought.