La petite vie was first a stage sketch of the comedy duo Ding et Dong, formed by Claude Meunier and Serge Thériault, and later a hit Quebec television sitcom aired by Radio-Canada from 1993 to 1999. In total, 59 episodes were created plus 3 specials, two for Christmas and one for New Year's 2000. It is to date the only Canadian TV show to ever gather more than 4 million viewers, a performance it achieved twice in 1995.

With the help of a gruff old neighbor, a little girl from Limoilou, blessed with a fertile imagination, sets out to make her father happier.

A story about a young woman, Vera, who is somebody, living the life of a troubled teenager in the time right before the end of the Soviet Union. She lives in a very small Russian apartment with her mother and father, however being this close to each other makes the living get rough. Their daily life is plagued with massive amounts of alcohol (mainly vodka) and when she tries to escape her home life, she meets up with a boyfriend, Sergei who then moves into her already small apartment after sleeping with her. Every day little Vera has to go through hell just to get by, which even involves her going against her own morals after her father has done something extremely wrong.

When Lyudmila Ivanova made her infamous claim during a US-Soviet TV programme in 1986 that ‘There is no sex in the USSR!’, her comment – although roundly mocked at the time – revealed a certain truth about Soviet attitudes towards sex and the ways in which it was controlled by the regime, rendering it largely invisible. With this documentary, the director takes us through 70 years of Soviet history to highlight the interplay between sex, politics and society and the changing meanings attached to sex and sexuality under different General Secretaries.