Lado Kvataniya, a talented and innovative filmmaker, uses the concept of a police detective versus a serial killer to create an exciting and stylized narrative that ultimately revolves around the identity of an era: in this case, the late 1980s Soviet Union. With the advent of Glasnost and the end of communist rule, the West also learned about the fact that there were serial killers in Russia - the most notorious case probably being Andrei Chikatilo, nicknamed the Rostov Ripper or the Russian Hannibal Lecter.
Based on these and many other sources, Kvataniya and screenwriter Olga Gorodetskaya constructed an immersive psychological puzzle, jumping back and forth in time to reveal ever new-possible motives for the actions of all the protagonists. It all starts in 1990 when Detective Issa Davydov is celebrating his promotion and receives a call reporting a crime that looks precisely like the ones he famously captured some years before...
