USSR, 1980. Nursing home. Two old men, Grigory and Vladimir, await the mysterious guest all day with fear, sincerely believing that it is he who will decide their fate. One day they were visited by two: Vsevolod and his companion Varlam Shalamov - a blind, dumb, deaf and feeble old man. Leaving Varlam in a nursing home, Vsevolod sets him a tough condition: he must stop writing. Meanwhile, the other two, Anatoly and Andrey, are obsessed with searching for manuscripts with Varlam Shalamov's stories about Kolyma. They are being closely monitored, but no risks will divert them from their goal: to achieve publication of the writer's legacy.