Svetlana Obidina

A 15-year old Vika has to grow up. Only yesterday she was just a teenager and now she’s a mom. Catching sidelong scowls of adults, being mocked by peers, unbearable responsibility – it seems like the entire world is against her and Vika is all by herself. More truly, she has a child now, she’s not all alone.

Dovlatov charts six days in the life of a brilliant, ironic writer who saw far beyond the rigid limits of 70s Soviet Russia. Sergei Dovlatov fought to preserve his own talent and decency with poet and writer Joseph Brodsky, while watching his artist friends got crushed by the iron-willed state machinery.

Returning to Saint Petersburg after a long exile, the dashing Yakovlev, a retired army officer, makes a comfortable living by winning other people's duels. An enigmatic, focused, and extremely skilled professional, he leaves a trail of dead bodies behind him as he swirls through polite society, frequently called upon to wield a pistol as a surrogate in duels at dawn. But when Yakovlev meets the naïve young Prince Tuchov and his beautiful sister, Princess Martha, the normally cold-hearted mercenary is surprised by hitherto undetected emotions. What transpires uncovers a series of revelations about his past and his present self.

Four best friends. They've been to war, they've seen life, but they are still passionate, young and willing to serve their country. They found their place at OMON - Russian Special Police Squad. They can count only on each other, and their real family is themselves. After working hours they become simple guys with ordinary dreams like family and comfort. But life changes when once in a night club the friends incidentally get in a fight with the local mafia. It turns out that they have no fear and they are ready to stand for each other whatever happens.

A detective film with some serious depth. Called back from Moscow on a search for a missing person, this is a story of a man forced to plunge into the past, reminded at every turn of the previous life he led in Saint Petersburg. He must come to terms with the present to move forward - and on top of it all, he's not even sure he's awake. The over-arching presence of St Petersburg, sometimes benign, sometimes threatening, bears witness to his journey.

When you are eleven years old, it seems that anything can happen to you. Especially when your grandmother comes to visit you, who knows how to do magic. You can even learn magic yourself, and then your life will become like a dream: sometimes scary, sometimes intoxicating, then completely unlike anything else. But in order to find a talent in yourself, or save a friend, or just make sure that at least someone really loves you, then you have to try yourself. And no magic will help here.

This story unites the destinies of the landowners and their servants, and is considered to be one of the most complete portraits of the Russian life in the late XIX century. It takes place in Dry Valley, a village owned by the noble family of Khrushevs. The story tells about Natalia, a young and naive girl who serves in their country house. We see and experience her love, dedication to her masters, mysticism, exile, betrayal and faith, while the Dry Valley is falling to pieces, slowly but inevitably, as well as the lives of its inhabitants.

The action takes place shortly after the end of the Second World War in the Siberian hinterland, among Russians and Germans with damaged personal stories and a strange transformation: the victors seem to be crawling into the skins of the defeated, and vice versa. Ignat, is the embodiment of the larger-than-life image of the Soviet victorious warrior who, in fact, proves to be shell-shocked, sick and broken, although not completely destroyed. Trains become fetish for the heroes of the film, and speed becomes a mania; they virtually become one with their steam engines, while the machines take on human names. The heroes set up an almost fatal race in the Siberian forest, risking their own lives and those of others.

Somewhere in the Urals, between the European and the Asian parts of Russia, there is a stele called "Europe-Asia". Professional swindlers have taken a liking to this place. For several days in a row a wedding is taking place by the roadside. They hide under the veil of the bride, in the costumes of the groom and witnesses, cynically taking in turn every traveler. Fraudsters "spin" the travelers for cash gifts to the newlyweds, generously feeding the guests with diluted alcohol. Under the guidance of the "mother of the bride" the group plays out incredibly funny criminal plays, and their spectators, accomplices and victims are PR people and political technologists, Chinese and Hungarians, policemen and bandits, beggar nomad children and, of course, foreign tourists nostalgic for the once abandoned Russia....

Yar is a place that keeps people, and they can't part with it. If they leave, they will die. The only one who wants to escape from the Yar is our main character Karev. But leaving the Yar, he thereby breaks with all traditional values, and unwittingly becomes the cause of the death of people dear to him...