The plot of the film develops in Moscow in the 1930s. A famous writer on the rise of his career suddenly finds himself at the center of a literary scandal. The play based on his play is removed from the repertoire, colleagues defiantly avoid meeting, in a matter of days he turns into an outcast. Soon after, he meets Margarita, who becomes his lover and muse. Inspired by her love and support, the writer takes on a new novel, where the characters are people from his environment, and the main character is the mysterious Woland, whose prototype is a recent acquaintance foreigner. The writer plunges headlong into the world of his novel and gradually ceases to notice how fiction and reality are intertwined into one whole.