Exhausted by his work and ambition, the brilliant young intellectual Andrey Kovrin returns to his childhood home, where he reunites with Tanya Pesotskaya and her father, Egor. As Andrey and Tanya fall in love, he begins seeing a mysterious figure who looks exactly like him: the Black Monk. The Monk tells Andrey that he is one of the chosen few - and that his suffering is inseparable from his genius. Soon, the figure begins to multiply. Andrey’s doubles become companions, collaborators, rivals, and an entire chorus of his consciousness. As they make him feel increasingly free, creative, and certain of his exceptional destiny, Tanya must confront a reality very different from his own.