An art house movie tells about the search for love and happiness. A school principal and his friend hijack an old steam locomotive and start a travel along the abandoned railroad - to deal in coal. The film plot is seemingly simple: two friends (a school principal Parentsov and a truck driver who is referred to as Father) steal a large amount of coal and take it by an old abandoned rail into the vast borderless steppe where they want to sell it. Driver's numb son Misha and a strange and formidable being, Engine Driver, accompany them. The story of a huge locomotive that the group uses for transporting the coal runs parallel to the main plot line. The locomotive was once called Tsar the Vampire and represented a symbol of enormous power that could be compared with the energy of the whole great world. Later it was turned into a museum exhibit. And now it serves as a transport means for the stolen coal. The third line is dedicated to a traveling circus that disappeared several years ...