Biopic covering a large portion of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky's life, from the Petrashevsky Circle to the writing of The Brothers Karamazov.

The idea of the film is a narrative about Dostoevsky through the fate of the women who surrounded him. The story will focus on the seven years of Dostoevsky's life after hard labor. The film is based on the writer's correspondence with his brother and with his second wife Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, as well as scientific monographs.

In a gritty and gloomy village, detective Enzo Vitello becomes increasingly obsessed with tracking down the serial killer “Dostoyevsky”. The killer has a habit of leaving letters next to his victims’ bodies in which he describes their last moments. Seduced by the murderer’s nihilistic notes, and driven by his own inner demons, Vitello embarks on a correspondence with Dostoyevsky outside the knowledge of his investigative team. This exchange drives Vitello into the darker corners of his soul and forces him to confront a secret from his past – a secret that led him to abandon his daughter Ambra when she was a toddler. Vitello penetrates deep into the murderer’s head, but also opens the doors to his own thoughts and emotions. A gruelling game of cat and mouse develops.

When Pawlikowski visited the Dostoevsky Museum in St Petersburg, he learned that Dostoevsky's only descendant, Dimitri, was still alive. The director found Dimitri in Germany and, after agreeing to pay him a thousand pounds, began filming. After their first meeting, the director thought that Dimitri "had grown a beard to look more like a Dostoevsky and I thought, a great face, great character, he could be a good key to the East/West situation today." Dimitri is invited to Germany by the members of the Dostoevsky Society. He is asked to give a series of lectures about his great grandfather. He knows little about his illustrious ancestor, and his only ambition is to earn enough money to buy a Mercedes. Dimitri feels burdened by his relative's status, because everybody expects him to be a 'prophet', just as Fyodor was considered to be. The film blends real events with fictional elements; the meeting of Dimitri Dostoevsky and Count Tolstoy in London is accompanied by a voiceover explaining that Fyodor and Leo never met, suggesting that Dimitri's story might itself be a fiction. Perhaps, we wonder, the whole film is a trick, and Dimitri nothing more than a conman. Dostoevsky's Travels ruminates on the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia's transition to capitalism. Dimitri's yearning for material goods is hilarious, remarkable and full of pathos.