Oleg Abalyan

Maxim Shugaley and Samer Sueifan are finally returning to Russia after a long captivity in the Libyan prison "Mitiga". A few months later, a former bank manager in Tripoli, Farid, comes to Shugalei and offers to meet in Egypt — he has new information about terrorists in Libya. But the meeting of friends in Cairo will not take place. To help Farid avoid his own fate, Maxim will have to postpone his plans for a while…

Yekaterinburg of the 90s. A company of young poets, including the most talented — a junior researcher at the Institute of Geophysics Boris Ryzhy, wanders through the cold and dangerous streets of the city from party to party. Ironic and friendly, he can negotiate with local brothers with equal ease, drive to Moscow for the "Anti-Booker" award, fight at the stall and crash into the department.

Max is unemployed and dreams of becoming a musician. His neighbour, the elderly Viktor, is blind. Representatives of different generations and cultures, they nonetheless provide each other with a way of escaping their loneliness: Max needs a father figure, while Viktor needs a son.

This story is not a figment of the scriptwriters’ imagination; these are real living facts. New Russian action movie Shugaley is a story about the war that is going on today. The film is based on real events taking place in Libya today. Two Russian social scientists, Maxim Shugaley and Samir Seifan, are invited to the conflict-torn country to carry out a public opinion research. In the course of their work, they come over the information, that would be damaging to the puppet government if made public. Russians are kidnapped and tortured in a private prison for more than a year. The situation cannot be resolved peacefully, so the Russian side is preparing a rescue operation.

Russian sociologist Maxim Shugaley and his translator colleague Samer Sueifan are still being held in a Libyan prison. For more than a year, they have been subjected to torture and psychological violence on a daily basis. While in custody, Maxim Shugaley encounters various people who turn out to be, sometimes unknowingly, sources of information about the situation in Tripoli. Listening to their stories, the sociologist literally collects valuable information bit by bit, which can be decisive for the entire world community.