A tavern on Pyatnitskaya street is a meeting place for all kind of criminals. The only way for police to infiltrate the criminals is to send an undercover agent to the tavern.

Based on the famous fairytale "The Tinderbox" by Hans Christian Andersen. The main character of the film is a puppeteer who lives in a poor and gray world. He composes a fairy tale in which he himself, in the guise of a brave soldier, finds a flint and is helped by a kind wizard. The soldier falls in love with a spoiled, capricious princess who, as befits a princess, poses riddles to her numerous suitors. Her father, the king, is eager to see the soldier as her husband, as he believes the soldier has a great deal of gold. In the fairy tale, everything ends well, but in real life, not so much. "But life is not a fairy tale," his beloved girl says to him as she bids him farewell.

A brief encounter between two strangers, Victor and Lena, who meet on a bus. Victor, a performer traveling with an acting troupe, and Lena, a young woman on her way to visit her father, spend a day together, drawn to each other despite their different paths.