A revolutionary militant, a thug, an underground writer, a butler to a millionaire in Manhattan. But also a switchblade-waving poet, a lover of beautiful women, a warmonger, a political agitator, and a novelist who wrote of his greatness. Eduard Limonov’s life story is a journey through Russia, America, and Europe during the second half of the 20th century.
Late one evening in Moscow in 1937, Defence Counsel Sedov hears a knock at the door. Three women whose agronomist husbands have been sentenced to death for alleged sabotage beg him to take on the seemingly hopeless task of saving them. Sedov embarks upon a succession of encounters with increasingly powerful officials, gradually persuading them to look at the case anew. But the highest authorities are not so easily outmanoeuvered, and Sedov becomes canonised as a Stalinist zealot, with the film building inexorably to its chilling triple climax.
Summer, 1944. A military airbase near the very front-line. A young soviet pilot Sergey makes his first practice flight. In the course of this flight he hears a call for help on the radio from Russian pilots, having an unequal air combat with superior forces of the enemy. Sergey rushes to their rescue. His plane gets shut down, and he is taken prisoner. Soon he is taken to a special flight school, where future German aces are prepared and Russian pilots at the wheel of captured Russian aircrafts are used as living targets. Nobody wants to put up with such situation, and they prepare an escape.
