Alexander Maximov is a brilliant psychologist and the best negotiator in Russia. But even an ideal, it would seem, employee makes mistakes. In the past, while negotiating with the terrorists who had taken over the school, Maximov suffers a defeat when his daughter is killed. Unable to look his wife and son in the eyes, Alexander leaves the family. Years later the hero again faces the perpetrator of that tragedy - it turns out that during an explosion at that school the intruder did not die and now throws Maksimov a new challenge.
In a nostalgic Moscow of 1976, an unlucky actor meets a charismatic writer, a living classic of Soviet literature, who turns his life into a tragicomic farce with the artistic bohemia, foreign-currency prostitutes, the KGB staff and agents of the CIA.