Criticizing Vladimir Putin in Russia now carries a criminal charge, and this DW film follows the people serving time for it, known as Politzek. Arseny Turbin was fourteen when his teachers reported him to the FSB for criticizing Putin in class and on his YouTube channel; now seventeen, he is Russia's youngest political prisoner, and his mother Irina describes her fear that he will not survive his penal colony sentence. Sasha Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years in St. Petersburg for swapping supermarket price tags for anti-war messages after the invasion of Ukraine, and the film follows her mother Nadezhda's fight for her release, which came through a prisoner exchange after more than two years. Oleg Orlov, co-founder of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group Memorial, appears as another freed prisoner describing what the system does to those inside it. Interviews with families, released prisoners, and human rights advocates build a picture of a prison system used specifically to silence dissent.