Plumbum, or a Dangerous Game

A Soviet teenager adopts a code name based on the Latin word for lead, worms his way into the city's underworld gangs, and sets himself up as a supergrass. The special police squad to which Plumbum attaches himself are happy to use him, but when he turns in his own father for poaching, the zealousness with which he is pursuing his clean-up campaign raises some perplexing questions about his methods and motives. Is Plumbum an exemplary citizen, or simply the product of a repressive regime, which delegates only a distorted image of power to one who, like his fellow citizens, had so long been denied it? This was the subject of much controversy and heated debate when first released in the USSR.