Like an abandoned alien spaceship, the building of Dostoevsky's Drama Theatre stands on the bank of Volkhov River, only a kilometer away from the walls of famous Novgorod Kremlin. An architectural freak, unloved and uncared for, it sails high above the comforting provinciality of Novgorod the Great. Erected during the final years of Soviet rule, this remarkable example of postmodernist architecture has, for many decades, continued to mock the ancient and Soviet heritage of the city, as well as the mediocre tastes of its populace. The circumstances of theatre's uneasy survival, its persistent inability to fit into the Novgorod's surroundings, and its slow but sure demise at the hands of greedy bureaucrats, expose some deeply hidden flaws of Russian society, the corruption of its political system and the hypocrisy of its laws.

Filmmaker and photographer, Andrei Rozen has worked for two decades in nearly every facet of film and photo industries. A graduate of the American Film Institute Directors Program, he directed, shot, produced and edited a number of documentaries, commercials, and music videos. Bums' Paradise, the documentary he codirected with Thomas McCabe won the Golden Remi Award at the Houston International Film Festival and the St. Ann Award at the Moscow Documentary Film Festival. While working for Metropolis Editorial in San Francisco, Rozen has edited Jesse's Gone, a Golden Spire–award winning documentary directed by Michael Smith. From 2002 until the middle of 2007, Rozen lived in the city of his birth, Moscow. There he worked as an assignment photographer for a variety of magazines including Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, L'Officiel, and Swedish Elle. His articles and photographs have been published in Menu of Pleasures, Moulin Rouge, and Mark magazine (Holland). In Moscow, he also directed several commercial film projects, significantly expanding his production contacts in Russia.