On New Year’s Eve, 1986 Oleg Proshkin, a low-level Soviet investigator, gets called out to a disturbance — in his own apartment building.
Something’s off the moment he steps into the courtyard, and when he unlocks his door, he finds strangers inside. They’ve made themselves at home. Waiting for him: a Santa Claus he’s never seen before — and a disturbingly intelligent dog named Shapka. Santa says he’s been looking for Proshkin for years. When Proshkin was a boy, he mailed a postcard asking to be sent into space — the same space where, according to his mother, his father flew and never came back. Proshkin tries to fight. Tries to shout. It doesn’t matter. Santa drops the jolly act. He overpowers him, yanks a gift sack over his head, and hauls him off — past the rooflines, out into the black.
A surreal ride into the unstable architecture of human memory, and the hairline crack between reality and madness we all balance on — right up until it gives way.