The end of the 80s, the height of Perestroika, freedom and publicity. A successful journalist of the central Pskov newspaper Oleg Verkhovtsev, having learned that a terrible murder has occurred in the city, decides to write an article about what criminals who are sentenced to death are feeling. But in a local prison it's just not possible to get into it, and then the supreme character writes explicitly where he confesses to committing a recent murder.Oleg hopes that after spending a couple of days in the punishment cell, he will be released and write his article. But the circumstances begin to take shape against him - the newspaper editor says he knows nothing about Oleg being in prison to write the article, a close friend does not confirm the alibi, and even his own wife turns away from Verkhovtsev. To get out to freedom, Verkhovtsev manages only in the mid-nineties. Oleg sees how the country has changed, how people have changed - it seems to him that he has got into some other reality, which he can not get used to in any way. But a former journalist is very important to return his honest name and find out why then, seven years ago, he was betrayed by close people. And who really committed that terrible murder, for which they condemned Oleg...