An essay on a return to the city of childhood, where private memories of a catastrophe, historical traces, and Leo Tolstoy’s night in Arzamas fold into an uneasy image of the place. Present-day Arzamas, archival testimony, staged images, and the author’s recollections sit in the film as separate layers of time. The night Tolstoy lived through in Arzamas opens a realm of dream, where the past meets a future that, for the author, has already become a memory. Little by little, from those layers, Arzamas appears — a beautiful, scarred city.
