The story of four Gnessin Academy students. Young and talented cellists have a new teacher who makes demands on them on a completely different level. A randomly filmed video of the four of them playing goes viral, and they form a quartet. Torn between their popularity and preparation for an international competition, the characters grow up, encountering the temptations of youth along the way.

Some sporting victories are about more than just claiming a title. Some of them go down in history. The film follows the most dramatic and legendary showdown in the history of chess – the match between Anatoly Karpov, then world champion, and Viktor Korchnoi, a recent emigrant from the USSR. In this battle between two outstanding chess players, a duel of personalities under immense psychological pressure, the stakes are incomprehensibly high.