'The European', a 19th-century French diplomat who appears to be the Marquis de Custine, has nothing but contempt for Russians he tells the narrator that they are unable to create or appreciate beauty as Europeans do, as demonstrated by the European treasures around him. The narrator (whose point of view is always in first-person) meets another spectral but visible outsider, 'the European', and follows him through numerous rooms of the palace. On a winter's day, a small party of men and women arrive by horse-drawn carriage to a minor, side entrance of the Winter Palace, dressed in the style of the early 19th century to attend a ball hosted by the Emperor Alexander I. The film was entered into the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.

At times the narrator and the companion interact with the other performers, whilst at other times they pass unnoticed. Russian Ark uses the fourth wall device extensively, but repeatedly broken and re-erected. The film was recorded entirely in the Winter Palace of the Russian State Hermitage Museum on 23 December 2001 using a one-take single 96-minute Steadicam sequence shot. He is accompanied by 'the European', who represents the Marquis de Custine, a 19th-century French traveler. In each room, he encounters various real and fictional people from various periods in the city's 300-year history. In Russian Ark, an unnamed narrator wanders through the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, and implies that he died in some horrible accident and is a ghost drifting through the palace. Russian Ark (Russian: Русский ковчег, Russkij Kovcheg) is a 2002 experimental historical drama film directed by Alexander Sokurov.

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