Evgeniya Mandzhieva

Novice Fyodor accompanies father Pyotr on an official mission to the Polar Urals. Ahead of the missionaries is the farthest northern camp, which the locals cautiously call "the edge of the earth." And travelers are not at all welcome here.

Elza lives in a small town in the Republic of Kalmykia on the Caspian Sea. Another year comes to an end, it’s cold and the steppe is covered in a thin layer of snow. When her husband, who makes a living from illegal fishing, asks her one night what she did during the day, she lies. She wasn’t at her mother’s, but at the bus stop. She thought of leaving – to find out what it might be to escape the infinite expanse of her dreary small world. But she didn’t dare; instead she stays and withdraws into herself, unconcerned by who might see. One day, her husband doesn’t return from a dangerous boat trip. It is said that a fisherman only returns if he has a woman waiting for him and that seagulls are the souls of the missing. At the start of a somewhat unplanned pregnancy, widowed and alone, Elza wanders ever further through the city, plotting a path between tradition and the contemporary until she’s no longer on familiar ground.

A deal on assigning for property reveals more new rules and laws of the society in the nearest future. The rates haven’t been so high. Status is everything. Love is nothing.

Aldar hadn't been at homeplace for ten years. He is living in a big city now, being a voice of its countless streets. When his mother disappears in the steppe, he rushes back to find her. They will have to get to know each other again and go through the path that they did not have time to go through while she was still alive.

A love story with young protagonists, the action unfolding somewhere in the north of Russia. Exposition of nature plays an integral part in the dramatic development of events and the criminal plot of the finale.