Yury Geddert

Ten director graduates from Marina Razbezhkina’s School of Documentary Film and Documentary Theatre lived with a camera for two months in order to chronicle the last “Russian winter” and its popular uprising against Vladimir Putin’s presidential run. People, faces, conversations, protests, failures and triumphs come together to chronicle the campaign.

The picture is dedicated to the fate of Lyudmila Mikhailovna Kusakova - production designer of the Mosfilm film studio, who created costumes and sets for the cult Soviet films Anna Karenina, Pomegranate Bracelet, Aybolit-66, Ordinary Miracle, Pokrovskie Gates and many , many others.

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.

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.

A few summer days of three ordinary Moscow girls on the threshold of adulthood. Farewell to childhood in schoolyards and entrances of sleeping areas, where everything is for the first time and the world is just beginning - from secretly purchased cigarettes and cans with gin and tonic to an adult passport, first love and almost real tragedies.

Twenty-one day is a time period that terminal patients are allowed to stay in hospice. Time is pulsating here according to peculiar inner cycles: getting faster, slower or returning to its ordinary rhythm. We wander through physical and mental spaces: wards, gardens, memories. It is a story of two main protagonists, yet two strangers, for whom the regular talk about death constitutes an integral part of life.

What is going to happen if the painting of the great Dutch artist suddenly comes to life in a half-abandoned Russian village?

The film about the great scientist, thinker, human rights activist is based on the memories of his associates, declassified documents of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the KGB of the USSR, a chronicle shot by the KGB in the city of Gorky, and most importantly, animated drawings that Andrei Dmitrievich left on the margins of notebooks with formulas, in letters to children and grandchildren, as well as simply inventing some fantastic characters.

In the circus tent „Joy” the same thing happens every day – they dismantle and assemble the tent with a dome full of stars, give performances, and move on to the next place. Lynx and parrot trainers quarrel over every little thing, and Valera the clown always performs alone. Until one day a new partner joins him, the clown Yana, and he starts to dream about conquering the world of the circus together with her.

The convicts of the female penal-colony Marina, Olya and Albina are waiting to be released. To pass the time they decide to make puppets, sew them and stage a small performance.

Two twin brothers. Bright and charismatic. One paints temples, the other writes musicals. And for three years they have not communicated and live in different cities. What has separated them? Different views on life and creativity or love for the same girl?

In Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan a city of the future is being built. Named Innopolis, it was officially opened in 2015 and is the first new town to be built in Russia since the collapse of the USSR. The best IT specialists travel there from all over the country to create a new community. But those who work in the town’s service industry are ordinary inhabitants of the neighbouring villages: Pustiye Morkvashi and Vostochnaya Zvezda. What is this juxtaposition like: the new world and the old world? Perhaps, despite the apparent differences, these worlds are identical in their essence?

Many five-story buildings was built in Moscow during the sixties of the last century. Service life of these houses was designed for 50 years. Now these houses are destroyed in order to build new houses in their place. Digger crushes concrete blocks like cardboard. He looks like a dragon with a long neck. After two or three days dragon will grind house where Sasha and Lena live. But they don't have place to go. Relatives have taken Sasha's apartment ownership forcing him to sign the documents when he was drunk. Now Sasha's sister is ready to buy a room to Sasha, but she not allow him take Lena. Sasha does not agree, Sasha loves Lena. And Iron Dragon is coming.

Train from Moscow to Vladivostok and back to cope with the task. Freshmen of the Moscow Art Theater School are looking for travel companions to be played upon returning in a new performance. And you feel us - say fellow travelers. Harmonists, ZEKs, whalers, sappers, directors of vegetable bases ... Feel! Drink tea and moonshine with us, listen to our truth and bullshit. All the same, there is no edge. There is only an opportunity to find something important. Over these 14 days. For this road.

In a small village on the slopes of the former coal mines, Oleg Pavlov, the father of many children, screens the "Little Prince" of Exupery. The camera is the cheapest, bought for retirement. In the roles - Oleg and his four children. Two years of filming and editing - and journalists from all over Russia are on a visit to an amazing creative and friendly family. But the family never calls his father at the table. Children refuse to go to the premiere of the film. And Oleg himself does not go to spend the eldest daughter, when she leaves to live in another city. He just sleeps. And no one wakes him up.

The Caspian Sea washes the shores of five countries: Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenia, Iran and Azerbaijan. So the history of this largest lake in the world has always been intertwined with the history of the people living on its shores. These days, there is a ferry crossing the sea, which is the main setting for Denis Shabanov's documentary Caspian Hub. It is on this ferry that we meet our protagonists, learn their stories and dreams. The camera follows what is going on in their personal lives, their search for happiness against a backdrop of the primordial elements, combining narrative film and documentary elements to show the internal polyphony of individual human stories, with the powerful forces of nature as the backdrop. After all, it is this primordial power that contrasts so aptly with the transience of human life.

Jacob Janzen was arrested in 1938 and his family never saw him since. 80 years later his great-granddaughter Maria Lotsmanova comes to the Federal Security Service (FSB) archive to find out his fate.

My grandmother is 96 years old. She dreamed of becoming a ballerina, and became an engineer. I made this film because I wanted to understand who she really is, but instead I understood a little about myself.

Ivan Komendantov is only 16 years old. But he is already the secretary for ideology of the Stalingrad district committee of the Komsomol of Moscow. Vanya wants to quickly become an adult, so he enthusiastically takes up any business: whether it be the rise of the world economy or a special task to seduce a girl.

"Vacation" is a story about a big family, a small town and a strong feeling. The life of a foster family, where there is one mother for five, is strict discipline and established rules. Everything collapses when the eldest daughter's boyfriend comes for the New Year holidays. He is 17 years old, he is eager to become a new member of the family and happily pronounces the word "mother-in-law".