Kolia lives in a small town near the Barents Sea, in North Russia. He has his own auto-repair shop. His shop stands right next to the house where he lives with his young wife Lilya and his son from a previous marriage Roma.
Vadim Shelevyat, the Mayor of the town, wants to take away his business, his house and his land. First he tries buying off  Kolia, but Kolia cannot stand losing everything he has, not only the land, but also all the beauty that has surrounded him  from the day of his birth. So Vadim Shelevyat starts being more aggressive..

“When a man feels the tight grip of anxiety in the face of need and uncertainty, when he gets overwhelmed with hazy images of
the future, scared for his loved ones, and fearful of death on the prowl, what can he do except give up his freedom and free will,
and hand these treasures over willingly to a trustworthy person in exchange for deceptive guarantees of security, social protection,
or even of an illusory community? Thomas Hobbes’ outlook on the state is that of a philosopher on man’s deal with the devil: he sees it as a monster created by man  to prevent “the war of all against all”, and by the understandable will to achieve security in exchange for freedom, man’s sole true  possession.
Just like we are all, from birth, marked by the original sin, we are all born in a “state”. The spiritual power of the state over man knows no limit.
The arduous alliance between man and the state has been a theme of life in Russia for quite a long time. But if my film is rooted in  the Russian land, it is only because I feel no kinship, no genetic link with anything else. Yet I am deeply convinced that, whatever  society each and everyone of us lives in, from the most developed to the most archaic, we will all be faced one day with the following  alternative: either live as a slave or live as a free man. And if we naively think that there must be a kind of state power that can free  us from that choice, we are seriously mistaken. In the life of every man, there comes a time when one is faced with the system,
with the “world”, and must stand up for his sense of justice, his sense of God on Earth.
It is still possible today to ask these questions to the audience and to find a tragic hero in our land, a “son of God”, a character who  has been tragic from time immemorial, and this is precisely the reason why my homeland isn’t lost yet to me, or to those who have  made this film.”
Andrey Zvyagintsev

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