Discoveries from Russia World Cinema

What happened in the house that Jack built? It all started with the cheese that lay in the house that Jack built.

Usually people don't think about how they breathe. But try to hold your breath for five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. Is it hard? And how do those who have to fight for every breath live? The film tells about the life of people with the most common rare genetic disease of cystic fibrosis. About 3,500 people with this diagnosis live in Russia. Only a quarter of them will live to be 18 years old.

A unique documentary about an inheritance of communism. An hidden world: the world of Kommunalki. In Saint Petersburg a lot of different people of different ages, culture and background live together in rooms inside big flats where they share common areas as the kitchen and the bathroom. This happens for 100 years... Since the October Revolution.

This is a documentary about the similarities of old people and children and, for different reasons, how they see the world in the same way and believe in miracles. Each of these "children" needs love and attention.

From the Barents Sea, a chill wind seems to blow constantly across a semi-deserted town at the edge of the world. Nevertheless, a little community holds out here. In a flawlessly filmed portrait of this extraordinary place, the theme linking the residents is their determination to chart their own course. Bardak was a marine, but his garrison broke up and his comrades sought a better life elsewhere. He stayed behind among the many empty buildings that are slowly but surely being consumed by the elements. Meanwhile, Dima, a young poacher​, flouts as many rules as he can, but gives friendly directions to lost tourists and reads lovingly to his little daughter. Ferryman Alexander is locked in a silent generational battle with his teenage daughter Masha; her eyes are on the outside world. Further along, a little team of ships from the Second World War turns up, and a woman steadfastly runs a weather station.

New film by Polina Torshilova

The heroic fate of Mikhail Devyataev, fighter pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union, honorary citizen of the city of Kazan and the Republic of Mordovia is not a myth, although it looks like a Hollywood blockbuster in tortuous and thrilling scenario. He passed through four death camps and on 8 February 1945 he escaped from the Usedom Island concentration camp aboard a Heinkel 111 bomber with 9 Soviet suicide bombers. Usedom Island was home to the highly secret German missile center in Peenemünde, where the world's only V-2 ballistic rocket was tested, the weapon of revenge, as Hitler called them. Historians have described as miraculous the fact that the Heinkel 111, which Mikhail Devyataev assimilated the controls practically in the air, could not be shot down by the German fighters sent in alarm.

The lieutenant Suvorov and his small group of soldiers come to an abandoned village where only few people are left, and among them there is a schoolteacher with children. Suvorov is quite sure that the front line soon will be here. The lieutenant and his soldiers stay in the village and start their first fight with Nazis, giving time the others to leave…

SPARTA is the Agricultural Poetized Association for the Development of Labor Activity. This is how the commune calls itself, which has been engaged in the development of the "Theory of Happiness" in the Ukrainian village "Karavan" for more than 20 years. Unable to reconcile with the collapse of communist utopia, the "Spartans" created their own.

Vera and Vasya are students of the Pedagogical University. At first glance, they are so different – an excellent student and a boxer. But they have something that brings them closer – this is faith in love, in friendship, in a person. Very soon Vera and Vasya realize that they love each other. But not everyone is happy about their happiness.

The story that the film tells begins on New Year's Eve, but it's not a festive event at all. The main character of the film Lena and her husband Sergey are getting divorced. Emotional emptiness pushes Lena to a desperate act: she goes to Kamensk to return her first love, Kostya. On the train, Lena meets a random traveling companion, Maxim. After spending the journey in easy and pleasant conversations, they part at the train station, not thinking that they will ever have to see each other again.

"Three Interviews." This is from my archives, a TV shoot with Dima Frolov, 1994. Part one: my interview with Vlad for St. Petersburg TV. This interview is listed first because it's being published online for the first time. Part two: Vlad interviews Viktor Tuzov, and part three: Vlad interviews Timur Novikov (we filmed these two interviews for Tatyana Didenko's program "Silence 9"). I've already published the last two interviews online, but I decided to combine all three now—for friends, a chance to mentally transport myself back to those wonderful times when it seemed nothing could foreshadow disaster (at that point, Viktor was already terminally ill, but it was perceived as something extraordinary—an accident, an evil fate, the fate of one man).

Director Eduard suffers from prolonged depression. The devil Filimon comes to his aid. The encounter allows the characters to look at their lives from a different perspective. There is always a way out; the important thing is to try to find it.

A woman confronts increasingly eccentric officials to process her documents. Little by little, she is consumed by the nonsensical bureaucratic system.

March of mothers on rainy Moscow in defense of girls from the "New Greatness" Anna Pavlikova and Maria Dubovik and their transfer from a pre-trial detention center under house arrest.

The main heroine is the cosmonaut's wife. Despite the fact that she is on Earth and her husband is in orbit, the spouses decide to “go” on a date to Georgia. The heroine walks through the old city of Tbilisi and the Kazbegi mountains, dines at a local restaurant and tells her lover about all her impressions by phone. So that her husband can better understand where she is, the girl calls him the latitude and longitude of her location on Earth.

A man sees all women naked, and only his own wife he sees in a fur coat.

Incredible phantasmagoria of merry-go-round people, who are usually called the dregs of society . The clip of the band "Holy Hares" ("Inflatable pistol"). Vocalist Slava Martov.

The world's first documentary about Siberia's punk rock scene in the 1980s. It was a phenomenon of those times that this music existed thousands of miles away from the movement's epicentres in New York and London.

Based on the novel by Emile Zola. The picture was not released. The movie is not fully preserved.

The film is about young scientists, how they come to science, conduct research, how they decide to stay or go into business, and how difficult it is to make a choice between Russian laboratories and the proposals of foreign research centers.

On the outskirts, a woman takes care of her old father. To this end, she resigned from work and refused any other personal affairs. Each day is similar to the previous one, every day its burden becomes heavier.

The plot of the film develops in two different time periods. The main character wakes up and realizes that he has spent over 50 years in a coma, but has not aged at all. Nobody knows what happened to him. Fragments of memories lead him to a remote village, far away from civilization, where he had traveled half a century ago to study a mysterious radio signal. There is now a research station there that studies strange local anomalies. The main character starts his own investigation and gradually uncovers the events of the past. Many years ago, local residents discovered a crashed alien spaceship a few kilometers away from the village. The ship contained alien bodies inside sarcophagi. It turned out that the ship’s technology slows down the aging process, and the village residents started worshipping the dormant aliens, believing them to be gods.

A family of Altai ornithologists will go to the south of the continent following the endangered steppe eagles. A similar trip — from the north of Russia to Africa — will be made by Vologda ornithologist Miroslav Babushkin. Sensors mounted on birds will allow scientists to track the eagles’ route and understand the dangers they can face. Ospreys and steppe eagles are birds living in Russia. They were much less fortunate than leopards and Amur tigers. And although feathered predators have all the makings of a “national brand” (remember whose image is displayed on the national emblem and minted on coins), it is likely that these species will soon remain only in heraldry, forever disappearing from the wild.

When the war, going somewhere far away, becomes ordinary, you begin to notice it only when it comes to the house, killing and mutilating the young and the best. The hero of the film, who has returned from the Chechen war as a cripple, rejects his former lover, who fiercely seeks his disposition, and it is not clear what motivates her - a sense of duty to the defenseless or a sincere love that suddenly flared up.

The story of a homeless man who finds a baby thrown into the street on New Year's Eve and tries to save him.

On August 25, 1968, 7 people gathered in Lobnya Square in Moscow protesting against the entry of troops of the Warsaw Pact countries into Czechoslovakia. For 5 minutes of freedom in the main square of the Soviet Union, they paid years of prisons, links and camps. The authors of the film meet three participants of the legendary "demonstration of seven" and show young fighters for human rights in modern Russia. Who are they - the dissenters of our time - and what are they willing to sacrifice for the sake of living in a democratic society?

A student from St. Petersburg, Vasilisa, learns of a fatal diagnosis. She goes to Murmansk to look for her father, whom she has not seen for 20 years. It turns out that strangers have been living in her childhood home for a long time. The girl is ready to give up, but at that moment she begins to receive clues that can lead her to her father.

During an attempted arrest, a Russian intelligence officer working abroad is killed. The loss of such a valuable agent is the result of a leak of classified information from within Russia. The counterintelligence investigation yields troubling results: a mole has infiltrated the Main Intelligence Directorate, passing top-secret information abroad while operating under the cover of Western intelligence services.

In Tsumikh, Makhacheva brings herself and her own biography to the centre-stage. She interrogates the fraught relationship between personal and public memory by revisiting, comparing and subverting how her late grandfather, Rasul Gamzatov (b.1923 - 2003), is remembered. In the work, Makhacheva’s childhood memories meet her adult remembrances and his public memorialisation, which the film subtly reveals are at odds with one another.

A short film ad for Pedigree.

To the idly meditating musician received a call from his distant friend with a proposal to write a song about the untimely departed Lady Diana.

Young man embarks on a journey to Siberian town confronting several terrifying images of his past.

Simon Elevich Shnol is a professor, Doctor of Biological Sciences, one of the organizers of the world's first Department of Biophysics at the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University. An amazing memory and the talent of a storyteller easily unite different episodes of life in time and space. Through the prism of the biography of Simon Elevich, we see a whole era, from the repressions of the 1930s and the devastation of the war years to the revival of the country and the formation of new scientific knowledge.

The main character has difficulties with a beautiful young wife. And at this moment he meets a friend of his youth, whom he has not seen for 20 years. His daughter helps him to arrange his happiness and is happy herself, because now she has two beloved and loving mothers. And all these adventures involve the magical spirit of the New Year, when everyone must be happy.

The adventures of an unusual dog named Thriller, who, thanks to a miracle capsule stolen from an underground laboratory, can read human thoughts.

An art film by Timur Novikov and Sergey Shutov.

Sergei Chudakov is either an upstart, or a genius, or maybe an ordinary scoundrel, about whom many once heard, but no one knew. We have restored the portrait of an ambiguous person to show how easy it is to lose everything if you don’t control yourself and your actions.

Thousands of kilometers of snowy silence, severe frosts and piercing winds, the deceptive fragile beauty of the ice. It’s the Arctic, the end of the world, where, in the words of one of the characters, the human soul means the universe. Perhaps that is why for ages these disturbing expenses have lured the fearless and the romantic. This is where the history of the great country was made – the Northern Sea Route was laid. In this film the past meets the present and the heroes of today – captains and crews of the superpowerful atomic icebreakers – just like their predecessors set off on voyages unaware of what lies ahead for them, what trials await them on their long arctic route…

The story is about a little dog who drove a greedy clerk out of the village.

Confident, determined, successful Oksana is realized not only in work. In her personal life, too, everything is fine. It was. Until Vera appeared in Oksana's office, concerned about the problems of her wards from a boarding school for minors. In addition, due to Oksana's fault, Vera was hospitalized. Verina's problems need to be solved urgently - and Oksana gets down to business, rolling up her sleeves. To expose corrupt officials, to find lost children, to cope with a teenage riot - this is the plan for the week. I have to call for help from my ex-husband, who still cannot understand why he is an ex. This is how this story begins, which will teach Oksana to believe, forgive and love.

The turbosaurs were looking forward to the winter to go on the most fun adventures together with Petya, Katya and a new member of the team, Sirena. Building a skating rink or saving a lost penguin is not difficult for our friendly company of Turbosaurs and children.

Composer Alexander Knaifel’s work A Silly Horse consists of 15 stories for a singer and piano. Each story has its title, and these titles were used to find newsreel clips from the 20th century, which have nothing in common except that they are archive material. The music and the image magically combine to create the story of a boy who hears and sees only the words “Why dreams”, which gave this film its name.

The young Moscow group "Patience!", led by Sergey Dmitriev, reveals the thoughts of a police officer who participates in the dispersal of a rally, and at this moment dreams of a completely different life.

A fantasy in cartoon on the music of the Cumparsita de Gerardo Rodriguez matos (in an arrangement of A. Serebrennikov). The musicians begin to play the famous tango on whose music begin to dance the most unlikely characters.

Lena's main character's life seems perfect... from the outside: favorite job, gorgeous appearance, famous and wealthy husband. In fact, she had long been tired of playing the role of a socialite, and her love for her husband had irrevocably passed. One day Lena meets a man in a museum who evokes the strongest feelings in her from the very first minute. It's then that she remembers a prediction she heard from a random fortune teller many years ago...

Documentary film from the set of Igor Olshansky’s debut short film “Easter”. Igor Olshansky is a participant of Alexander Sokurov’s programme “Example of Intonation”, a non-commercial film support foundation.

The story of a lonely city surveillance worker who watches a street dog through cameras — a dog he has grown attached to but has never met in person.