In May 1937, a man waits every night next to the elevator of his Leningrad apartment for Stalin's henchmen to come and take him away. The man is the composer Shostakovich, and he waits by the lift to spare his family the sight of his arrest. Gaining the favor of the powerful has two sides: Stalin, who suddenly seems interested in Shostakovich's music, leaves the performance of his opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" during the intermission. From then on, the composer is a man marked for elimination. By chance, he escapes the purges, but what does it mean for an artist to be unable to make a free choice? What is the relationship between art and oppression, dictatorship and creativity? And is it morally wrong to bow to power in order to be able to work artistically?.