Natali Starynkevich

Sometimes it seems to parents that their child has been replaced... and two Ivanov families from the south of Russia are simply sure of this: after 16 years, namesakes will find out that their children were confused in the maternity hospital. What if your beloved son is not really your own, but your blood is being raised by strangers? And in a luxury that you never even dreamed of. And how will he accept his new, but painfully poor relatives?

A rich heiress, Maria Sorokina, goes missing after a quarrel with her husband. Boris Novinsky, head of the police station, entrusts this case to a young detective, yesterday's intern, Alina Novinskaya, his daughter. It turns out that a maniac who strangles and disfigures young women who look like Maria Sorokina operates in the town. The search for Maria brings her husband, Mark, and Alina together. Seven years later, Alina and Mark have a strong family. But one day, Mark goes on a business trip and meets there a woman who looks like his missing wife, Maria, like two peas in a pod. Mark is unable to master the feelings that have overwhelmed him again and leaves Alina for a woman who so frighteningly resembles his late first wife. Meanwhile murders of young women are renewed in the town - a mysterious maniac, already forgotten by everyone, goes hunting again. Alina, abandoned by her husband, returns to the police work and the search for a maniac, which leads her to a shocking discovery.

Zhenya and Boris are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and recriminations. Already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, they are impatient to start again, to turn the page – even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha. Until, after witnessing one of their fights, Alyosha disappears.

What do they all share in common? What are they searching for?

Accidentally, Alyona finds herself alone in her lover's country-house on Christmas Eve. All she can see from the window is a snow-covered desert, and a cat is the only living creature who is near. The heating is turned off, her mobile phone battery is low. Alyona tries to get out of the country-house, but the more external circumstances she overcomes the deeper she sinks into her inner hell. At the end of the day her desire to escape suddenly evolves into desire to die. There are three layers in the film: physical, symbolical and metaphysical. All Alyona's activity is a surface that hides her struggle with her inner demons, her existential solitude and her inability to cope with it. Trying to escape the swamp of unsolved issues Alyona sinks only deeper and deeper to reach the bottom, then push off and start her way to inner resurrection. The only thing we are never given enough is love. The only thing we never give enough is love.