Production
A modern fairy tale with scientists, partisans, cosmonauts, officials, and the Motherland. The scientist and his assistant are collecting the ingredients for an elixir that can resurrect dead people to life. At the same time, officials are looking for the carpenter who has a power to transmute water into oil.
All day long the TV shows an ice-hole. Ice-holes are the theme of the day, a winter tradition that unites believers and sportsmen, stars and walruses, the president and the unemployed. In the centre of the news reports are the topics of Baptism, fishing and the criminal chronicle. The president and a pike, the artist and the crit- ics, the oligarch and the law enforcement team – they all meet at an ice- hole in search of solutions for their problems. The jobless Muscovite, with bad habits, dives down an ice-hole for a wife, just like Sadko. The fairy- tale plots intertwine with documentary context, and it is no longer clear where reality ends. Remember Nietzsche: if you long gaze into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you.
In the winter of 2021 rallies were held in Russia in support of Alexei Navalny. People protested against the arrest of the politician. The number of those detained at the rallies exceeded 17,000 people, many of whom received administrative punishment in the form of arrest. There were not enough places for detention in Moscow, and therefore the detainees were sent to the Center for the temporary detention of foreign citizens in Sakharovo near Moscow. As a result, an unusual group of people gathered in the special detention center - almost a thousand young men and women who were close in spirit. This film is their memories of their days behind bars.
