The film is about the first Moscow cooperative apartment building, many of whose residents were victims of Stalinist repressions. The idea for the film came from a long-time resident of the building, Dmitry Belanovsky, whose family moved there in 1939. The previous tenant of the apartment was arrested by the NKVD*. For many years Dmitry Belanovsky wanted to know who had lived in this apartment before him and what had happened to these people. He spent almost twenty years searching for the answer to this question.
*NKVD: People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, acted as the political police until 1954
