Welcome to New Karabash
In the Urals lies Karabash, once the dirtiest city on Earth. A state plan promises a new Switzerland - parks, fresh paint and PR films for a town ruled by a copper smelter. Over eight years as the world shifts, filmmaker Olga keeps returning from her "clean" Berlin life to follow two men inside this staged progress. Ajrat, a worker and father who once turned his house into a mosque, loses his garden, his son and finally his family before taking a job at the factory he hates. Gennadij, an ex-councillor who helped build dirty Karabash and raised a metal cross above it, clings to ritual and control as his influence crumbles. As power tightens in Russia and men are sent to a distant war, the filmmaker is detained for her work and sees how her own silence mirrors the town's.