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Midnight, Moscow. Three mysterious strangers gather at a seedy bar and spin stories about themselves that are so bizarre they cannot be true. The outlandish stories prompt even stranger questions. Why do humans strive to clone other people, if a new loved one cannot substitute one who’s dead? Where is the border between life and death, and how high is man allowed to raise the curtain to look over to the other side? Is science in fact a form of contemporary magic? These curious people, these strange questions, this bizarre night are only the beginning. They are only the start to the film, the most surreal story of all.

Director Ilia Khrzhanovsky’s audacious and provocative debut film is a startling and idiosyncratic creative vision of contemporary Russia. The strangers’ extraordinary stories form the background for one of the most unique journeys in contemporary cinema, a woman’s strange trip to a funeral in the Russian countryside to visit a village consumed by mourning, obsessed with strange rituals and crafts. What if you make a mask of a real person and then burn it in a macabre fire ritual? Is there a connection between these primeval superstitions and modern science? Between this unreal village and the strangers in the dark city bar? Is there a link between the past and the present? Can both these worlds of mystical shamanism and scientific modernity really co-exist in contemporary Russia? These worlds are so disparate that Khrzhanovsky broke the rules of accepted cinematic language and used two different editing rhythms, and two divergent concepts for both sound and visuals. Yet, a closer look reveals that these two worlds may be but clones of each other, reverse reflections, like positive and negative film, or like a mirror that reflects the past in the present…