Nikolay Fomich Ferapontov is a muralist and "classic of socialist realism", who lived a life far from sinless. However, all success has remained in the distant past, and in his old age he has to make ends meet, interrupting by random orders. Everything changes when a young art critic Myasoedov appears on his doorstep and finds paintings in the back room, in which he unexpectedly recognizes masterpieces of fine art. Not really imagining the real origin of the paintings, Nikolay Fomich calls himself their author, and from that moment the hunt for money and fame begins.

Former student Raskolnikov is pushed to murder when struggling to pay the rent on his apartment. When the murder is being investigated by the police, Raskolnikov struggles between trying to hide his guilt and the pressure to confess.

A dead city deep inside the Asian desert is besieged by dog-wolfs. In the past, the city was on an ocean beach and full of life. After the ocean disappeared everyone left, with only a few people still surviving in a lighthouse and inside an abandoned tanker, hiding from the dogs. A group of hunters gets recruited to go and kill the dogs. After a journey through the desert in an old delapidated bus, they arive to the dead city. Soon the dogs appear and the fight for survival begins. Hunters manage to kill most of the dogs, but in the process they turn on each other and all but two lose their lives, not to the dogs, but to each other and their own insanity. This surrealistic, post-apocalypic film is a metaphorical tale with several layers of meaning. The macabre atmosphere is complemented by a haunting musical score. As with other Svetozarov's films, the plot is just a medium to create mythological imagery. In the tradition of aestetics of the "Leningrad school" his movies are loaded with apocalyptical realism, existential nihilism, and macabre "Dostoyevschina." While brutal and violent, his movies reflect Russian spiritualism and mysticism and metaphorically speak of Russian destiny.