Synopsis
Aldar (25) lives in Moscow. He works as an intern in a creative cross-media agency. He’s doing well, he’s surrounded by interesting and fashionable people. But his outgoings far exceed his income. Nobody can understand how an intern can afford this way of life. They don’t know that his Mother lives in Kalmykia – a modest woman who is also a gifted craftswoman, working day and night to sew the most beautiful wedding dressed in her district. She scrimps and saves, spending nothing on herself, doing it all for her son. She happily finds justifications for all his faults and misdemeanours, even forgiving him for what might be regarded as the unforgivable. This really annoys her elder daughter Bugu (33), Aldar’s sister. Aldar loves his Mother, he’s often feels guilty about his behaviour towards her, but he never turns down her aid, and in doing this he makes her happy.
Suddenly, his Mother dies. Aldar’s nearest and dearest offer him their condolences, but every time he returns to her little house, he sees his Mother, he sees her sewing dresses, and she talks to him, as if still alive. Her apparitions on the one hand drive him insane, but on the other he doesn’t want to be rid of these visions. He likes the fact that his Mother is with him, as always forgiving him, he likes hearing the sound of her sewing machine, he likes to talk with her every now and again.
For Aldar, reality and the past meld into a unified time and space. Living in the present with a consciousness of the past and the future brings on a collapse of the material, actual world. Aldar’s life turns into a nightmare. He lives through in reality – in the present – all his misdeeds of the past, but the present won’t let him atone for his sins before his Mother. Can he recover? Can he break the painful link and give to his Mother the most important gift of all – the freedom to be reborn?