The wedding turns into a crime scene. The wedding is like the apotheosis of meaninglessness, a metaphor for society. The story of the generation of the eighties with a tragic ending. The film uses the true facts of the criminal case.

​Young soldiers in the Soviet Internal Troops are subjected to systematic abuse during their dedovshchina (hazing). The plot unfolds primarily aboard a prisoner transport rail car guarded by a unit of paramilitary conscripts.

The title of Andriy Donchyk's feature film Oxygen Starvation offers a fitting metaphor for what happened to Ukrainian film-making after the collapse of the USSR. Contrary to widespread expectations, freedom from Soviet oppression did not usher in a renaissance in Ukraine. The momentum of totalitarianism persisted in all spheres of life and took new forms. Despite the abolition of censorship, the glaring absence of creative achievement increasingly looked like a paralysis of the mind. Many rushed to declare Ukrainian cinema brain-dead, incapable of existing under free market conditions. The picture however was much more complex than appears at first glance.