Moscow, 1996. Young and enterprising banker Andrey Rubanov has a wife, Irma, and a small child. He and his friend Misha also have over a million dollars between them. Seeing themselves as the future elite of the new state, oligarchs, they sign up for a major deal, but it turns out the friends have been drawn into a massive embezzlement scheme involving billions from the treasury. After his arrest, Andrei ends up in an overcrowded communal cell at Matrosskaya Tishina, a purgatory where he must transform himself into a different person in order to survive and return to the familiar world.
