Discoveries from Russia World Cinema

For eight years, a team of specialists created a whole world about which almost nothing was known. The world of Kievan Rus of the tenth century. They managed to make historical films with documentary accuracy. Icelandic sagas and the works of Oriental travelers, Byzantine books and, of course, ancient Russian chronicles were studied and researched. The oldest dated chronicle is kept in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg. It was these texts that formed the basis of the script. Five built cities, hand—sewn costumes, forged weapons, a Viking ship — a drakkar — built according to the drawings of that time, complex computer graphics - all in order for the viewer to fully immerse himself in the atmosphere of the early Middle Ages of the Viking film.

«I often have dreams. Careless dreams. When the sun was shining. It was calm and quiet. And a peaceful sky overhead.» An experimental musical film on the theme of love. Memories of the past excite the imagination and make you evaluate what is happening in the present in a new way.

Maxim and Svetlana 15 years together. He is a successful television journalist, she leads the heading "Women's Tears" in a popular women's magazine. One day, Maxim, preparing a report on influential politics, meets a young girl named Elena and unexpectedly passionately falls in love with her. Elena responds to Maxim in return, not suspecting that he is married. Sveta accidentally meets Elena, who, as it turns out in a couple of minutes, turns out to be ... her husband’s mistress. Both understand that Maxim deceived them. Maxim is not ready to choose between a devoted wife and a charming lover. Finally, women make a decision for him ...

The former supervisor of the camp of political prisoners, Barkhatov, turned out to be an ordinary corporal in the war, failed, and did not want to change in the new circumstances and remained a camp "turntable". And during the war, being together with naive village people, he arranged a small "puppet" theater, where he became the main "puppeteer".

Manyunya, Narine and the Picture, accompanied by Ba, go on summer holidays to a real Russian village to grandma Nastya. At first, they are very passionate about the unusual atmosphere of a new place, but they quickly begin to get bored. Having decided to speed up the time before leaving home, the girls, on a tip from local boys, turn to the witch grandmother, who allegedly fulfills any desires. She agrees to help, but sets her own conditions. Fulfilling the orders of the witch, the girls get into amazing adventures, reminiscent of the plots of Russian folk tales.

Envoy Yulia flies to the planet and meets Rex, who said that at first everything went well, and then, as a result of the absorption of local silicon organisms, mutations caused by silicon viruses began. As a result, Harper received a lethal dose of radiation. Rex separated his head, connected it to an autonomous life support system, and created several Harper clones so that earth scientists would attach Harper's head to the body of one of them. Harper said that the project's name has a second meaning: The end of technological civilization.

In this 10-minute study the fi lm crew tries to get to the secrets of one of the wildest branches of experimental medicine.

After Hans Christian Andersen's heroine turned into sea foam, the fairies of the air took her to them with promises of receiving a human soul after 3,000 years of service.

The beautiful and self-confident Mila is trying to find a groom for the quiet and shy Lyuba. One evening they barely get away from the local punks and find themselves in the cozy house of the local guy Slava. Here they are found by the favorite of women Kolya, with whom Mila once had an affair. As a result, the inconspicuous and unlucky Lyuba takes her beloved away from the bright and successful Mila and leaves with him to Moscow. And Mila remains in the house by the sea and marries the humble Slava. Twenty years later, the heroes are waiting for a new meeting and a new turn in fate.

Live performance for Garsington Opera, June-July, 2016.

Where do childhood dreams lead? And is it worth it to be dependent on illusions. 8-year-old Oksana falls in love with her father's employee, 25-year-old handsome Boris. He jokingly promises to wait until the girl grows up and marry her. Boris does not keep his word, and marries his peer Vika. Oksana childishly dramatizes this. She promises herself that by all means, she will get Boris. On the advice of her grandmother, the girl molds her dream out of plasticine. After almost 10 years, she bitterly regrets her desire. To recognize the true feelings, the girl will have to survive the collapse of the family business, the loss of the closest and most loving person. Only by getting rid of the obsession of childhood, Oksana will find happiness.

The heroes of the picture - poets, composers, sponsors and murderers - come together at the House of Culture. Some - to celebrate the New Year, a killer nicknamed Violinist - to remove the businessman Kishechnikov, and Kostya from the sanitary epidemiological station - to send to eternal rest the dog Moo-moo. Such an accumulation of people in one place inevitably leads to confusion ...

A young Tajik girl, Maija (Nilufar Faizieva), flies to Russia following her fiancé, Khamid(Makhsum Abdullaev), where he works as a guest worker and lives in the slums with other workers like him. He promises to marry her, but eventually leaves her with barely known people and returns back toTajikistan for a marriage arranged by his parents.

Aymas, the 55-year-old protagonist of the film, has seen a lot in his life. A lawyer from Germany brings along bitter news that Aymas's only daughter has passed away and left her fortune to his father. Aimlessly ,Aymas wanders along the streets of the town which is constantly filled with fog. Fog lies both in the streets and in Aymas's brains. The fog can only be dispelled by wind or a girl named Samal, whom Aymas accidentally meets in the fog. If fact, the word samal means 'wind' in Central Asia. The girl is really like the wind - she's wayward, impulsive and unpredictable. She behaves exactly like she pleases. She scatters foundations. She's in love with another girl and she's very unhappy. To Aymas, Samal reminds of his daughter. For her sake, Aymas delves into a series of adventures with unpredictable consequences. It seems to him that they're getting closer to each other. But how can you can get closer to the wind and lock it into a cage?

This is a story about a man who believes that he has two “selves” - external and internal. That is, an organism is a certain conglomerate of cells, each of which is a separate individual. This hybrid creature has a certain common personal “I” that uses the entire organism, and is the organism itself, which has its own will. According to the character, one can communicate with him, which is what he is trying to do. He wants to reach him and comes up with different ways of communication: injecting substances under the skin or intravenously, tattooing texts on the body, swallowing objects. The answer would come in the form of a rash or other physical manifestation that had to be interpreted. As a result, communication is carried out and the second “I” agrees to die.

Sleeping area of the city. The body of a seven-year-old girl was found in the river, not far from the house. There are no witnesses to the incident, but there is a strange young man who says he tried to save the girl.

As a child, Victor Starffin fled the Russian Revolution and settled in Japan, where he grew up to find success as a baseball superstar. However, he constantly battled to overcome many hardships such as poverty, xenophobia, and a world war. Starffin is survived by his two daughters who take us on a wild ride of shifting identities, international rivalries, tragic love, and one heck of a fastball.

In the frigid waters off of Russia’s Bering Strait, Inuit and Chukchi hunters today still seek out the giant sea mammals that have provided their people with food since time immemorial. It is known, that the whale hunting today is controversial and subject to international criticism and regulations. But the Inuit and Chukchi hunt is permitted by international law because of the whaling is the foundation of their culture and their life. The contemporary story of elders Aleksandr and Aleksei blends seamlessly with that of “the woman who gave birth to a whale” and other ancient myths, told here in vivid animation, in this ongoing struggle for survival and preservation of a traditional lifestyle in one of the most remote places on earth.

A modern version of the famous Russian fairy tale "The Frog Princess".

1905. The successful breeder Mastakov is happily in love with the colonel's widow. And everything would be fine, but a strange old man with a girl showed up in the neighborhood. And with horror, he recognizes in him the Masters of his former comrade in hard labor. They fled together, but Mastakov was lucky, and the old man was caught, and he served his 12 years. The old man does not need money, he has come for his soul, he wants to vent his anger and envy, to make him suffer...

Why in the world is a Georgian chorus singing a traditional song that unexpectedly mentions the death of Saddam Hussein? The stars of the film, taken by surprise, talk about this odd turn of events "live". The conversation then shifts to samurais by the sea, the poets Mandelstam, Kliuev and Gorodezky, Moscow in the 1930s, and a Russian painter who immortalized Putin fishing. All surreal glimpses of the artist's relationship with power. The "second part" of a film that stirred a scandal at the Orizzonti section of the 2011 Venice Film Festival. Director's statement The goal of this experimental film was to apply the technology and linguistic peculiarities of modern fine arts to the cinema. The film consists of several lines: each of these lines was shot with its own specific stylistics in different corners of the planet.

Sokurov directed and filmed Mozart’s Requiem for the Rossica Choir in the wonderful hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic.

He's been called a 'wonderful troublemaker', 'comet man' and 'the last hippy of the pink city'. Robert Sahakyants was a renowned Soviet and Armenian animator. He was a director, writer and artist who created animated films. Robert Sahakyants used his work to express his particular view of the world around him. His animated films feature constant movement, whirls of colour and myriad wonderful characters inspired by Armenia. Robert Sahakyants was a true patriot to his motherland. The love for his people drove Robert Sahakyants to openly criticise everything and everyone he disagreed with. He boldly spoke his mind about anything he found troubling, from political events to ugly sculptures in nearby houses. The film features recollections from Robert Sahakyants's friends and family.

The project of a full-length horror film based on Japanese folklore.

Irina, a small-town nurse, has a heart defect. According to the doctors' prognosis, her heart has not much time left to beat, and there is no one to take care of her six-year-old daughter Anna. Irina feverishly tries to find a way out and she gets the idea that Anya could be brought up by her grandfather - the father of the young man who left Irina pregnant. All she knows about her daughter's grandfather, Igor Vasilyevich Kutepov, is that he is a rather successful businessman and 63 years old.

Little Sonia's mother abandoned her family in the hope of a better life in America. The girl is surrounded by the love of her father and grandmother, but no one can replace her mother, whom she longs for. Sonia's father, disappointed in women after his wife's deed, does not share his daughter's enthusiasm, but in order to make her part with her dream, decides to make a small deception. Being a trucker, the girl's father finds himself in a third-rate cafe on the highway, where the rude and ugly barmaid Tamara works, and persuades her to live a little in his house and play the role of a future stepmother, so that Sonia forever lost the desire to find a new mother. Having settled Tamara at home, the father of the family goes on another voyage, hoping that on his return the problem will be solved. But it is not so easy to deprive the child of his dreams. Sonia decides that Tamara is simply bewitched, and if you remove the spell from her, she will turn into a kind and beautiful mother.

Trains travel through the night without stopping. The clatter of the carriages quickly disappears, along with the wail of the locomotive. The people at the station are all asleep. But why are they so exhausted ? And what are they waiting for? Set inside an isolated train depot, The Train Station is one of Sergei Loznitsa's most haunting films. It is also one of his most pointed social critiques. In this film, we are brought to a remote train station deep in the Russian woods. It's nighttime. In the distance, we hear the clatter of locomotives. The station, a small wooden building, sits silently, surrounded only by snow and train tracks.

In 2020, director Andrei Natotsinsky arrived in Sukhum, and the city greeted him with darkness: no lanterns were lit on the central square or around it. After learning that rolling blackouts are associated with cryptominers, who were attracted to Abkhazia by cheap electricity, Natotsinsky returned with a film crew. To figure out how the contrast between the active mining of cryptocurrency and the general devastation framed by wild landscapes works, he conducted four filming expeditions in three years. However, "Edge of the Night" is not a film about miners, or rather, not so much about them, as in general about a region that has not yet recovered from the war of 92-93, the subsequent conflicts and economic disaster. Immersing himself in local history, talking to a variety of people, watching the arrival and departure of miners, Natotsinsky tries to create an objective — as far as possible — picture of life in Abkhazia.

The story begins with the young girl Katya arranging a nanny for Maxim Dremov’s family - the general education of his nephew Ilya, who remained an orphan. Relations within the family do not work out - Maxim is unable to find a common language with his nephew, Maxim's wife. Problems arise in their common business. After another scandal at the dacha, Dremovy find the body of the killed Irina.

The story of Kasym Kaysenov, a Kazakh whom became a hero of the Soviet Union whilst fighting against the invading German army during World War Two .

In the center of the plot is a screenwriter hired to create a new film. He writes a script about his childhood in the post-war Moscow courtyard. About how the boys were at enmity with the firemen, how they tried to blow up the fire, and how the firemen took revenge on them ... And how the boys ate the earth, swearing allegiance to each other ... And about who passed the test and who did not .. In his memoirs the script writer seems to be walking around in circles, returning to his childhood, as the brightest part of his life, where he very much wants to return, like a prodigal son in his father's house...

The life of a brilliant scientist who managed to live in the era of “developed” socialism in accordance with his own ideas about freedom and morality did not leave indifferent either his colleagues or the authorities.

Two teenagers are investigating a mystery of a possible monster living in the lake near their home town of Zaborsk.

In the center of the story are middle—aged women who live far from the capital and fight every day for a decent existence , one of them was lucky — despite everything, she allowed herself love.

The Mistress of the Copper Mountain, Poloz, and other spirits of the Ural Mountains communicate with modern people who interfere with fairytale life.

Behind the high walls of the old Indian monastery, some businessmen organized a closed school of the occult sciences. The most capable student, the young man Ariel, who has the ability to levitate, once decides to escape from captivity. But the hunt begins on him

A village meeting in communist Russia to pay homage to Stalin leads to a gossip marathon, which develops into an endurance test for the participants.

The first biography of Pavel Durov, the creator of the social network VKontakte and the Telegram messenger told by his close circle. The biography of a person who claims to protects your privacy, but in fact - protects his own.

A story about a city built as a paradise but turned into hell – a city slowly turning into paradise again, just in a different way. Igor has been living in the Chernobyl Zone for almost ten years, for peace and a chance to escape modern civilization. Psychological issues, both personal and global, are still troubling him, and he embodies both harmonizing peace and supernatural stress. And an existential secret – the secret of the essence of life. He is surrounded by the elderly inhabitants of Chernobyl, living in villages entirely overcome by nature. They lead their unrealistic Atlantean lives, from which even war in Ukraine seems to be happening on another planet.

It is a heart warming journey through the dream of a little girl as she overcomes her fears and discovers a place full of love and peace.

Andrey lives with his sick mother, suffering serious disease, schizophrenia. Close relatives are tired of dealing with the disease: his father cut loose from his family long time ago, now he has another family; his sister also left home and for several years no one has heard from her. Only Andrey does not give up - day after day he fosters his sick mother, saves money and compiles documents to take her to Germany for treatment. But the fate is merciless to the main character - his mom dies the day before the departure - Andrey's world turned upside down - He hits the road to talk to his sister, to look into his father's eyes, to understand himself... "The Son" is a parable, a dream. The film is based upon a simple story about complicated relationships between a son and his parents and, what is most important, with himself. The relationships that end in tragic outcome.

In the far eastern republic, there was a strange man. A wanderer, in a word. And he had nothing but a stack of photos from the past and some simple belongings that he carried with him. He wandered from village to village, and when he came to the next one, he laid out stones with numbers on the square around him, climbed on tall stilts, put a wooden lock on his head, and stood motionless all day, pretending to be a sundial. That's how he earned his living. And then one day, in one of the villages, he met a little girl who had no friends.

As the mass deportations of the Chechen and Ingush peoples begin in 1944, young Daud and Seda escape to the mountains. When they get back to their native village, however, they witness a horrifying war crime.

A fifteen years old girl meets her dad for the first time after her mom is killed in accident.

Two guys accuse each other of drinking too much beer and eating too many snacks.

Mockumentary experimental film, which shows one day in the life of a young man. The action takes place on the Day of Soviet Cosmonautics, April 12, one of the last years of the USSR. Outside the window, it is gradually getting warmer, the onset of spring is felt, promising hope for the possibility of changes in the country. The hero of the film is fond of space. The young man, who idolizes Gagarin, is engaged in reconstruction, making the uniform in which the cosmonaut walked in the prime of his glory. Our hero is also a film enthusiast. He makes films with stories of space flights and shows them to his friends. The film is stylized as amateur films of the 1980s and was shot on a 16-mm color film made by the company" Svema", made in the Soviet Union. The quality of this film allows the viewer to fully immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the time of the film, which is dedicated to Soviet cosmonautics and Edward D. Wood Jr.

Former prisoners captured plane. But on the way there was a failure, and to alleviate the weight of the aircraft, they throw overboard box with three hostages. The hostages managed to land safely. Now they have to stick together. And around a foreign land with a strange unknown language.

New film by Miraslava Vybornykh

Ironic and philosophical film. Here everything is not as it really is. And this opens up a new essence of all things.

On her 15th birthday, Nastya talks to her father, a soldier who has been serving far from home for several years, on Skype. Rare video calls are the only opportunity to talk to her dad, so Nastya records them and sometimes watches them again. Noticing a strange inconsistency in the latest recording, she begins an investigation.