Chinese businessman Weihong comes to Russia to visit his business partner Victor, who is in debt to him. Weihong tries to put things in order: fire ineffective employees, improve sales. But it soon becomes clear that he cannot overcome the great Russian melancholy, and Victor is unable to help him. Then Weihong decides to take Victor's house to pay off the debt. Victor is ready to part with the house, but he faces desperate resistance from his adult daughters - Olga, Lena and Toma. The conflict escalates into a catastrophe that can destroy the family and even kill.

Moscow, 1996. Young and enterprising banker Andrei Rubanov has a wife Irma and a small child. And more than a million dollars between them with his friend Misha. Seeing themselves as the future elite of the new state, oligarchs, they sign up for a major deal, but it turns out that the friends were drawn into a large-scale scam to steal billions from the treasury. After his arrest, Andrei ends up in an overcrowded common cell at Matrosskaya Tishina, a purgatory where he must become a different person in order to survive and return to the familiar world.