“Just One: The True Story of Patient Zero” tells the story of the person commonly referred to as “patient zero” — the first Soviet citizen diagnosed with HIV. The official history of the epidemic in the USSR begins with this 1987 case, a crisis that has since affected millions in Russia: those living with the virus and those who have died from AIDS. Yet almost nothing is known about this individual. The few existing facts have long dissolved into myths, propaganda, and misinformation. No photographs, no footage — nothing. The biography of “patient zero” had to be reconstructed from scratch, turning the film into a historical investigation.

Igor S. Kon was a prominent Soviet and Russian sociologist, psychologist, and educator. He pioneered sex education in the USSR, worked extensively with teenagers and queer people, and supported those affected by the HIV epidemic. Despite living through times of repression and censorship, Igor S. Kon never gave up his scientific and educational work, and defended the ideas of individual freedom, equality, and tolerance until his final days.

Jews were called "the main secret of the Soviet Union." For seventy years they existed in the zone of silence, but this silence attracted a burning and constant interest. Some were sure that the Jews had penetrated everywhere, up to the top of the Soviet power, and ruled the entire USSR. Others looked for Jewish allusions in popular books, songs, films. Still others saw Jewish secret signs everywhere and everywhere. Where are the real facts, and where is the fruit of a sick imagination? And the very phenomenon of the Soviet Jew is also not a very clear thing. How did he remain a Jew, not retaining for the most part his religion, language, without preserving traditions, and often accepting new traditions with pleasure? Culturologist and journalist Anna Narinskaya, who grew up in a “non-Jewish Jewish family,” speaks to witnesses of the time, her friends and relatives, anthropologists and researchers of popular culture, and seems to be moving towards answering all these questions. But these searches lead her to a very strange place.