According to Nina Krivosheina's book, Four Thirds of Our Lives.

The film describes the events of the late 1940s, when, in the wake of post-war patriotism, many Russian emigrants repatriated to the USSR. The main action of the film is set in post-war Kiev.

Russian Alexei Golovin and his wife, Frenchwoman Marie, arrived in the USSR, faced with their own eyes the terrible realities of Stalinist totalitarianism. Almost all those who arrived with them on the steamer were sent to camps or shot. With the lives of the main characters are intertwined and the lives of neighbors in the communal apartment: Olga - informant NKVD, Anastasia Alexandrovna, forced to almost forget about her noble origin and her grandson Sasha, a talented athlete-swimmer.

Marichka has always been famous as the first beauty in the border village of Bukovina. Not one ostentatious guy tried to marry her to cook borscht and wait for her to work surrounded by kids, but the girl herself saw her fate a little differently. Dropping everything, she heads to town to learn music and become famous for her talent. Maestro Liberzon, to whom her knowledgeable people had sent her, promised to give her lessons in order to fulfill the girl's dreams, but instead she had to clean up in his house and carry out orders of economic direction.

The girl from the village is never afraid of physical labor, so such conditions are quite suitable for her. Finding a teacher and a home at the same time, she patiently waited for the promised teaching, day by day becoming more and more a simple maid. Not receiving knowledge from the landlord, Marichka had the opportunity to attend all his social events with his family, one of which was the performance of Don Juan. Infected with adventure and passion, the girl began to dream of a determined and fearless man who appeared in her life as an agitator soldier. He took the girl from the musician's house, but aggravation of hostilities forced him to flee the city, and Marichka was left with nothing ...

The film based on Franz Kafka stories ("Josephine the Singer or the Mouse People", "The Study of One Dog", "The Artist of Hunger", "Ancient Record", "Rejection", "Children on the Road", "Boredom" ", "America"), united by a single plot, is a documentary report from a fictional world.

The theater, in which people are hiding – adults and children, who have arranged their lives in different corners of the building, is besieged from the outside by an influx of wild nomads. The newcomers do not yet dare to make contact with the residents of the theater, but keep them in constant tension. The real idol of the residents of the theater is the singer Josephine, who shares the anxieties of her community, but all the time demands special attention to her person. After all, her art is nothing special – her screeching is the natural language of all the inhabitants.

Josephine claims exclusive adoration. That is why she is jealous of a visiting foreigner boy who demonstrates hunger pangs and distracts people from paying attention to the diva.

Josephine's power is irresistible, because her voice is the personification of the voice of the people who live their anxious everyday life in paradoxical conditions.