After graduating from school in the late 1980s, Sergei Zvyagintsev moved from Kaliningrad to Moscow, leaving behind his beloved girlfriend Masha and three childhood friends. A few years later, Zvyagintsev followed in his father’s footsteps and built a career in the state security services. Meanwhile, his former school friends illegally made their fortunes selling amber, while Masha married one of them. The criminal lawlessness at the major Kaliningrad «Yantar» plant begins to seriously concern the FSB. Carrying out a special assignment, Zvyagintsev returns to Kaliningrad fifteen years later and finds himself on opposite sides of the law from the people closest to him in his youth.
