Kunashir, one of the biggest islands of the Kuril Archipelago, is situated 16 kilometers from Japan. It was occupied by the Soviet army in 1945. One year later, after a short period of cohabitation, 17.000 Japanese and Ainu people who were living in the Kurils and on Sakhalin were deported to the island of Hokkaido. Since that time Japan has been demanding the return of the Kuril Islands. A peace treaty between the two countries still has not been signed.

A film about one of the most talented and original fresco artists of the 20th century, who painted more than 80 churches and chapels in the south-west of France.

The film paints a portrait juxtaposing two immigrants : Irina Makeenko, born in France but who left to live in the USSR at the age of 12, and Vladimir Kozlov, the film’s director, who arrived in France after the fall of the Soviet Union. White Russians established in the region of Toulouse since the 1920s, the parents of Irina Makeenko believed in Stalin’s promises and returned to the USSR in 1947. Nearly 50 years later, after Perestroïka, Vladimir Kozlov did the same journey in reverse – he, also, motivated by the dream of a better life.

Filmmaker Vladimir Kozlov observes the sometimes-extreme lengths the residents of Yuri Gagarin's hometown will go to in an attempt to commemorate his legacy.