Denis Shabaev

Father Alexander, a priest from Demidov in the Smolensk region, has a surprising secular passion: he never misses a ballet premiere at the Bolshoi or the Mariinsky. Although the Church doesn’t forbid such interests, his dual life raises the question of how an Orthodox spiritual life intersects with contemporary art.

Two people are on the road. Everyday life, business calls, games, a curve of the highway, a swing and again business calls... During this year the father and the daughter have not seen much of each other and they have not been alone for a long time. Two cameras are looking face to face; different fears inhabit one and the same space. There is a question: should they come back or should they continue traveling together?

New Moscow is an essay film about the city and its residents. Three different stories unfold in front of the lens, but all of them are united one way or another by the motif of nostalgia for youth, its achievements and traumas. The reverse movement of time becomes a form for a poetic conversation about the changeable nature of space.

The film’s action happens in the Donbass in our days. The protagonist is the Slovak Mira, who leaves his boring life of an émigré in England to go to the Luhansk People’s Republic. He sees his mission in the restoration of symbols of the Soviet empire: the monuments to Lenin, to miners, to workers...

The documentary follows the life of Farroukh, a young Tajik immigrant who lives in Moscow outskirts with his family and does odd jobs in dreams of becoming an actor.

Over the past two years, humanity has faced an absolutely new degree of loneliness and fear – a pandemic. Disunity or, conversely, too close contact for a long time, emotional burnout led society to collective trauma. "New World" is the story of 12 families from Moscow, Paris, St. Petersburg, New York, Kiev, Simferopol, Herat, Miami and Dublin. The characters of the film are learning to live in new conditions. We follow their transformation with the help of their own video diaries and special shooting, recording the most intimate and important events that they have lived over the past two years. For all of them, the pandemic is becoming a test of strength. Against the background of a new reality and a new world, we remember the pandemic almost with nostalgia, still feeling its consequences.

On the 11th of November 2018 the elections were held in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic. One of those who came to vote is a former locksmith Alexander Zaslavsky, a participant under the call sign "Old" in the battles in 2014 and 2015.