Vitaly Mansky walks the streets of Riga with Alexander Rodnyansky, formerly one of Russia’s leading film producers. They talk about war, cinema, Russia and Ukraine, emigration, lost meanings, and the people who stayed behind in Russia. Why did so many continue to accept what was happening after 2014? What has become of Russian cinema and the army of talented filmmakers who remained in the country? Why are people in Russia today hiding away and cutting off contact with one another? And how is it possible that humanity can contemplate colonizing Mars while at the same time committing killings on an industrial scale?

After a 31-year hiatus, world-renowned producer Alexander Rodnyansky returns to documentary filmmaking with "Notes of a True Criminal". Born in Kyiv, Rodnyansky was sentenced in absentia by a Russian court to 8.5 years in prison for his anti-war stance. In his film, Rodnyansky contemplates key events in Ukraine’s history and how they have affected him and his family; including the referendum on Ukraine’s independence, the mass execution of Jews at Babyn Yar, and the Soviet authorities’ attempt to erase the memory of this tragedy, Chernobyl, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Germany, and, of course, the war—the full-scale invasion by the Russian army, which began on February 24, 2022. The author’s narrative is not focused on the events themselves but on people, human destinies, and art. Rodnyansky uses footage from his own documentaries and those of his family members to tell a new and deeply human story.

A daughter goes on a date with her father, who was sentenced to death for serving the Nazis during the war.