Anna Karamazoff

Anna returns from the labor camp to Leningrad, starting a fragile reintegration into a city that has changed around her. During the train ride she keeps a diary and weighs an uncertain future in the aftermath of her ordeal. The moment hints at the personal distances she must navigate to rebuild her life.

On the train, a young man covered in liquid clay appears and fires at Anna with an imaginary bow. The surreal act underscores the danger and dreamlike disorientation of the postwar setting. The encounter unsettles Anna as she continues toward her destination.

Anna reaches her apartment only to find it already inhabited by three Uzbek women. One of them, Tatiana Drubich's character, tries to pull a milk tooth from a child, adding a disturbing, unsettling mood. The scene marks a sudden rupture in Anna's sense of home.

Anna goes to a communal apartment where her documents were once hidden. A child speaks from behind a door, claiming to be alone and unable to open it. Anna is eventually recognized and admitted inside, where two men and a woman who had pretended to be the child live. The chest with the documents has been burned.

Later, Anna visits a house where a mad grandmother lives with her grandsons, Alexander and Mari. She helps pull a tooth from the boy, and the house is filled with avant-garde artworks. The unsettling environment foreshadows deeper revelations about family and memory.

Anna learns of her mother's death, Maria Alexandrovna, at the grandmother's place. The news deepens her sense of loss and pushes her toward seeking a gravesite. The moment links personal tragedy to the larger search for memory.

Mari explains how to find Anna's mother's grave, saying the Big Black Dog Kaplan will show the way. The dog Greta, a double for Anna in scenes with the dog, accompanies the guidance as a symbolic guardian. This moment marks a shift from domestic intrigue to a quest for memory.

Anna goes to the cemetery where a pioneer is being buried. The Big Black Dog Kaplan (Greta) passes by and marks her presence, guiding her toward the search for her mother's grave. The dog is a recurring symbolic presence in her journey.

Returning to the city, Anna spots a boy in a rabbit costume and chases him into a cinema. There she discovers a black-and-white film that intercuts fragments from Khodjamirov's Unexpected Joys, featuring actresses Natasha and Lena who collect carpets. The dreamlike film within the film mirrors Anna's unraveling reality.

In the cinema, two sisters learn a legend about a magical carpet and decide to test it at the front with the blood of an innocent victim. They travel to the front hoping to revive belief by spilling blood on the carpet. The affair escalates as the plan encounters fatal and tragic consequences.

Prokudin-Gorsky agrees to fulfill the plan but ends up spilling his own blood on the carpet and is killed with a sabre. Despite the spectacle, the belief is not revived, and the ruse collapses. The event underscores the futility and danger of manufactured myth.

Anna meets Viktor Sibilev, a struggling musician, and they plot to kill and rob a rich retired officer who had previously denounced Anna. Anna carries poison from the labor camp and they acquire Crimean apples to administer it. After a successful poisoning, Anna robs the officer but escapes when his wife returns.

Anna and the young man go to a theater where she leaves the purse in a box. The bag begins to swell, and she descends into a flooded toilet to discard the stolen clothes to an old cleaning lady. The sequence underscores the moral ambiguity and desperation of Anna's choices.

A passing train causes a Lenin portrait to fall and break in the young man's house, accompanied by the cry 'Sesame, open up!' This final odd moment frames the permeable boundary between reality and illusion in Anna's world. It closes on a note of mystery rather than resolution.