Here's to You and Us! 2023

Moscow, 1952, mid-October, the XIX Congress of the CPSU had just ended. A communal apartment on Bolshaya Pirogovka. In one of the rooms lives the Petkevich family: Ariadna with her husband Boris and her parents, professor of philosophy Peter Kazimirovich and his wife Angelina Fyodorovna. For those few months that remained until Stalin's death, the family experiences a series of dramatic events. But on a background of terrible time, antisemitism, fabricated "case of doctors", denunciations and snitches, there are people who live their lives without losing dignity.

Real Stories 2021

An almanac of three stories.

Dark Spell 2021

Terror strikes when a heartbroken woman uses black magic to get her husband back.

Curator 2020

In the regional centre Kuznetsky the mayor has been killed in his office. The murderer is Dimur Kavsadze, in charge of commercial construction work for the city administration. A squall of public concern beleaguers the city. Alexander Danilin is an undercover curator, an intermediary between the business and the authorities; he tries to eliminate trouble and return life to normal. The cause of the tragedy was a construction project, which wrapped itself around Kuznetsky like a tumour, and which was a source of profit for the authorities and the local builders. The construction “devours” free land, the souls of people and even what seems beyond the law of profit: the family. Neither the death of people, nor common sense can stop the construction…

Fairy 2020

The creator of the best virtual reality games is convinced that in reality everyone and everything is controlled, but a chance meeting with a young activist opens his eyes to the fact that the world is much wider and more complicated than anything that he knows and understands about it.

Forgotten by God 2017

The story of a Russian family living and dying through four wars: the Russian Civil War in 1920, the Great Patriotic War in 1942, the First Chechen War in 1996, and the Russian military intervention in Ukraine in 2017.

The Man from the Future 2016

"Only fifty minutes to go until the end of the world, please head to the check-out!", thus goes the instruction that rings out from the loudspeakers of a Moscow supermarket. When cashier Gulya shuts up the shop and resolves to prepare for the apocalypse, a naked individual appears from amongst the aisles to claim that he has arrived from the future with the task of saving the planet. Originally from Bishkek, Gulya is supposedly the chosen mother of the savior, whom he, Alexander Merkuriev, is to impregnate. The morning after however it soon becomes clear that Alexander ended up in the wrong supermarket with the wrong Gulya. The right Gulya, who is actually from Tashkent, cannot keep the revelation to herself on learning of her destiny, and wastes no time in breaking the story to the media. This in turn proves such a sensation that even the Presidential Administration of Russia gets involved. All involved are soon brought back to earth however when a headmistress from a provincial...

After You're Gone 2016

Aleksey Temnikov is a renowned ballet dancer and an acknowledged genius whose career was abruptly cut short after sustaining an injury in the 1990s. Twenty years later, Aleksey discovers that his condition is degenerative and that he will soon lose the ability to walk. Aleksey sets out to choreograph a ballet he envisaged long before but never staged for fear of failure. “What will I leave behind after I am gone?” is a question Aleksey feels he must contend with. However, returning to the world of ballet will not be easy for a man who has made so many enemies over the course of his life.

The Dive 2015

One day the host of the cultural review program, Leonid Platonov, comes to his workplace, unaware that thanks to Internet trolls, he became the star of Russian Youtube. The channel's management decides to take advantage of the situation and offers Leonid a new concept of his evening program. Now the protagonist will have to confront the new television trends.

Road to Berlin 2015

Summer, 1942. A young Russian communications officer sentenced to death flees execution and becomes brothers-in-arms with his guard against the Germans.

The Fool 2014

The Fool is a movie about a simple plumber. An honest man, he is up against an entire system of corrupted bureaucrats. At stake are the lives of 800 inhabitants of an old dorm that is at risk of collapsing within the span of the night.

Return ticket 2012

Maria returns to the city where her family lives, her friends — those whom she loves more than life, those with whom she was separated for six long years. Mary was convicted of murder. A small town where everyone knows each other, still at a loss: how could a young woman kill her husband? Only Mary herself knows the truth and the price of this tragic event from the past. The long-awaited return home becomes a real test for her.

Home 2011

In a large house in the middle of the steppes, the Shamanovs meet for a family gathering. When suddenly the eldest brother Victor appears after a 25 year absence, unspoken family conflicts come to light. Nobody suspects that Victor is escaping his dark past and that killers are looking for his hiding place.

Melody of Love 2011

Silent Souls 2010

Miron Alekseevich, director of a paper and pulp mill, goes to bury his wife Tanya in the place where they once spent their honeymoon. He goes not alone, but with a photographer named Stork, to whom he tells touching details of his life with Tanya. The narrative weaves together the memories of the characters, as well as the rituals and beliefs of the Meri people, a small Finnish tribe that once lived in the Northern Volga region and dissolved among the Russians.

The Railway 2007

Mischa, a mute boy, sets out on a surrealistic journey together with his father and two men. Their means of transportation is an old Soviet locomotive, loaded with stolen coal. The travellers intend to sell off the loot on their way through the borderless steppes of inner Russia. As a parallel to the main plot, sequences of a mysterious travelling circus keep reappearing in a very suggestive way. Many of the odd artists at the circus are people that the four protagonists encounter in the wilderness along the overgrown railway. All through the movie there is a sensation of magic crossed with pure realism, stressed by the crackling communistic infrastructure and a twisted sense of humor. The border between reality and fantasy is very subtle here. The Railway is a story about strong family ties, but also an ambitious interpretation of the clash between the Russia of old and new. One could call it the rebirth of a long forgotten genre: the Russian wonder story.

Still Waters 2000

Kashtanov, professor of medicine and famous Moscow surgeon, is experiencing midlife crisis. Suddenly he decides to leave everything and escape to the countryside in order to spend some time with old friends.