Andrey Kiselev

On July 30, 2018, documentary filmmaker Alexander Rastorguev was killed in the Central African Republic. He left a unique mark on Russian cinema, but managed to do much less than he could. "Rastorguev" - a portrait of one of the brightest and most free filmmakers of our time; direct speech and fragments of films, forming a single statement about the meaning of art, homeland and pain.

The 2021 Duma elections made Mikhail Lobanov a recognizable Moscow politician. The 37-year-old mathematician, lecturer at the Moscow State University, has long been involved in social activities: ten years ago he opposed political agitation at the university, participated in the creation of an independent association of university employees to protect their rights, and was almost fired for his activism. In 2021 elections, Lobanov ran for the Communist Party (he is not a member of the party, calls himself a democratic socialist) and waged a powerful grassroots campaign against the pro-government candidate, TV presenter Yevgeny Popov.

The documentary project The Term was conceived in May 2012. When the directing trio commenced mapping the Russian sociopolitical landscape, Vladimir Putin had just settled into the Kremlin for his third term. The original experimental format of “documentary bulletins,” which were published daily online, allowed for wide-ranging content; in the feature film version, however, the filmmakers focused solely on the members of various opposition groups. Nevertheless, the work’s neutral position remains and viewers have to interpret the objectively presented situations for themselves. The main characteristics of this strongly authentic movie include close contact with the protagonists, precise editing, and an effectively controlled release of information.

A girl from St. Petersburg walks around protest-ridden Moscow, talking to riot police and believing that sooner or later they will go over to the side of the demonstrators. An 18-year-old student of a St. Petersburg college introduces herself as Alice and tells about herself that from the age of four she lived in an orphanage and in foster families. In Moscow, Alisa, for whom this is the first rally in her life, walks along the police cordons and looks under the OMON helmet. "Under the mask you can't see, are you even human?"

How Lyusia Stein - a graduate of VGIK and a municipal deputy of Moscow - went to work for Ksenia Sobchak's campaign headquarters.

A portrait of Richard Semashkov, a rapper famous for anti-liberal songs and friendship with Prilepin and other "patriotic" artists.

Ilya is 13 years old. This is his first time on the tour as part of the Orthodox center team. The weather turned bad, the tourists hid in tents, and Ilya went in search of adventures and cigarettes.

On the evening of August 9, they celebrated and thought that this was happening all over the country, but then it turned out that Alyaksandr Lukashenka was declared the winner of the Belarusian elections. Now the inhabitants of Borovlyan are pondering what to do, and jokingly propose to create the Borovlyany People's Republic.

Two days before the inauguration of Vladimir Putin, a protest action "Down with the tsar" took place in Moscow. The organizer of the rally, Alexei Navalny, was detained, the demonstrators were attacked by Cossacks, they were beaten by the police.

After the start of mass protests in Belarus, demonstrators also appeared in Moscow - at the Belarusian embassy.

About young workers and why they joined the protests - the film by Sasha Kulak, Yulia Vishnevetskaya and Andrei Kiselev "Strike. Minsk Tractor Plant".

The rally in support of Alexei Navalny was initially called for in the center of Moscow, on Lubyanskaya Square, but the authorities blocked all approaches to it. Then some of the demonstrators went to the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center, where Navalny was. The police hunted them, cutting off individual groups and using force. Over one and a half thousand people were detained. Two days later, on February 2, the court changed Navalny's suspended sentence to a real one - two years and eight months in prison. On the same evening new protests began.

On December 23, 2020, the smelting shop in the village of Nickel carried out the last melting and was stopped forever. The workshop began to be built back in the 30s, when this territory belonged to Finland, and the village was then called Kolosjoki. At the end of World War II, when the territory was ceded to the Soviet Union, the destroyed plant was restored, and the village was named Nickel. It is located west of Murmansk, a few kilometers from the border with Norway. In the 80s, the plant emitted about 400 thousand tons of sulfur dioxide into the air per year, and in 1990 an environmental campaign was even launched in Norway “Stop the Soviet clouds of death”" The Norilsk Nickel company, which was transferred to the Nickel mining and metallurgical plant in the 90s, initially agreed with Norway on the modernization of enterprises on the Kola Peninsula, but then abandoned the program.

A 12-year-old girl, Tasia, from the village of Tomsino in the Pskov Region wrote a letter to Vladimir Putin asking her to help her mother, a nurse in a local hospital. The villagers didn’t like this, where Tasya and her mother had moved shortly before that - they say, you need to "work, not ask." Tasha began to be poisoned, and an ex-girlfriend met her online under the guise of a young man and lured naked photographs.

The Great Cross procession is considered the largest and most difficult pilgrimage route in Russia. Many participants in the course believe that if you go this way with pure thoughts and a specific request to God, then it will be fulfilled. The main character of the film Leonid also has a request - an intimate dream. And there is a feeling that for him this religious procession is the last.