The village of Kolodozero, deeply concealed in the woods of Pudozh, lies on the border between Arkhangelsk Oblast and Karelia, in the Russian north.

Fifteen years ago these places enchanted three friends from Moscow who were wandering the north in search of the meaning of life, and most likely of themselves. In 2001 they gathered resources and started building a new church to replace the one that had burned down in 1977; one of them, the redheaded rebel and punk Arkadiy Shlykov, a graduate of the Moscow spiritual seminary, was ordained in 2005, and forty years later parish life was born anew in the village. The stern locals at first cast suspicion on the shaggy-haired, rockstar-resembling priest, but came to love him wholeheartedly, accepting his freedom, both external and internal. This is a story about the people of the Russian north, about what keeps them together, about spirit and soul, about their passions and emotions.