"This new riff on Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale finds us in revolutionary Russia, where five years of civil war and upheaval have finally given way to an uneasy peace. But as the victorious Comrade Leon attempts to restore order, a hapless miner named Anton triggers a catastrophic accident, leaving a national disaster in his wake. His punishment? Desertion on an island in the Caspian Sea, at the mercy of a sedulous singing drifter -- and his equally-talented bear."