Red Tie, Black Forest

June 1975. A pioneer camp in the remote Carpathian forests. After the evening inspection, three boys disappear. Their belongings are in place, beds untouched, as if they stepped out for a minute and didn’t return. The camp is closed and guarded, meant for children of high-ranking parents, so the authorities ask for one thing: no noise. But the more they insist, the clearer the foreign lie becomes. Investigator Tumansky arrives from Moscow as part of an operational group. He immediately sees that the director is more worried about his career than the children, but the main figure in the camp is not him at all. The main one is the head counselor Nikifor Guz, nicknamed John: round glasses, an impenetrable face, and power that relies not on position but on fear and the habit of obedience. Expert Graiva feels a strange boy from her distant past rising in her memory, very similar to this counselor. She isn’t sure it’s really him, but doesn’t have time to find out. At dawn, Nikifor is found hanging in the woods from an oak tree. It looks like a suicide. But the examination shows: he was hanged while already dead. Tumansky realizes that the children’s disappearance and John’s death are connected by a mystery that the adults are hiding too diligently. The question is, what are people willing to pay so that no one ever learns the truth.