Girl's Years

On a summer day in late 19th century Russia, a group of bourgeois friends and acquaintances gather at a dilapidated country estate.

A touching story about a white Gordon Setter with black ear, who became homeless because of his master's illness. His master, Ivan Ivanovich, a man far from being young, fond of hunting and nature, took a puppy to live with him, despite the dog's black ear being a "shame of nature" to his breed. The man always took his dog, whom he called Bim or Bimka, to hunting in country. Later, however Ivan Ivanovich began to have problems with heart and when the disease became worse was taken to a hospital. His dog couldn't bear waiting for the only person that ever cared for him and set out to find his master. Thus began the story of a homeless dog and his many breathtaking and exciting adventures, encounters of many people, kind and evil, and leads to an unexpected and heart-rending end.

Russia, 1936: revolutionary hero Colonel Kotov is spending an idyllic summer in his dacha with his young wife and six-year-old daughter Nadia and other assorted family and friends. Things change dramatically with the unheralded arrival of Cousin Dmitri from Moscow, who charms the women and little Nadia with his games and pianistic bravura. But Kotov isn't fooled: this is the time of Stalin's repression, with telephone calls in the middle of the night spelling doom - and he knows that Dmitri isn't paying a social call...

Katya and her 6-year-old son Sanya, who, in 1952, meet a veteran Soviet officer named Tolyan. Katya falls in love with Tolyan, who turns out to be a small time criminal, but who also becomes a father figure to Sanya ...

A 21-year-old reformed gangster's devotion to his family and his future is put to the test when he is released from prison and returns to his old stomping grounds in Watts, Los Angeles.

Russ Millings has just been released from prison after serving 21 years for a 3rd strike conviction for possessing an ounce of marijuana. As he tries to adapt to a world he doesn’t recognize – including trying to learn how to use the internet – he finds an abandoned baby in a dumpster behind the fast food restaurant where he works as a dishwasher. Unsure of what to do, and caught between impulses of kindness and panic, Russ soon realizes this could be his chance at redemption.

The protagonist Vlad is a man of about forty; he lives and works as watchman in an old sanatorium that is due to be demolished. He obviously needs this work to live the life of a hermit. One night a married couple appears at the sanatorium: Vera and Stas. They are on the run. They are pursued by former friends and business partners of Stas. Vlad decides to help them, because he too is hiding from the past. Each character is threatened with the inevitable payment for wrong choices in the past, but helping each other, they try to expiate these faults.

A young Kyrgyz immigrant tries to eke out a living in Moscow after abandoning her newborn and fleeing the hospital.

Middle-aged widow Beatrice Hunsdorfer and her daughters Ruth and Matilda are struggling to survive in a society they barely understand. Beatrice dreams of opening an elegant tea room but does not have the wherewithal to achieve her lofty goal. Epileptic Ruth is a rebellious adolescent, while shy but highly intelligent and idealistic Matilda seeks solace in her pets and school projects, including one designed to show how small amounts of radium affect marigolds.

Young, beautiful, talented Alexis Winston comes from nowhere to become a figure skating superstar. But her rise to stardom isn’t easy. She has to push herself, reinvent herself, and most painfully of all, leave her hometown boyfriend behind. When a tragic fall leaves her blind, she needs someone to believe in her, to love her; someone to convince her she has the strength to skate and dream again.