Directing
Anton and his girlfriend Marina recently moved from the provinces to a Moscow suburb. Because of financial difficulties, Anton almost immediately starts working as cladman. While Marina is busy packaging drugs, Anton figures out the hiding places and deals a little in clubs.
Lera streams games for a living. She becomes a victim of robbery and a young stranger comes to her rescue. As Lera and her savior grow closer, she realizes that he knows much more about her than a random passer-by should.
Olga is a public school music teacher whose orderly life takes a sharp turn after a call from an old acquaintance. A mutual friend has been badly wounded. Olga is forced to go on a journey that will unearth her forgotten past.
From Istanbul, feminist Anastasia Polozkova probes Russia's post-2022 assault on reproductive rights. In calls with activists, doctors and researchers in Russia/exile, Turkish and Kurdish feminists, she asks: ban in law, or in practice?
After the war began, memorial plaques bearing the names of victims of repression started being torn down far more often than before. The Last Address project didn’t have the resources to keep up with the vandalism. A group of activists stepped in: they began making temporary cardboard plaques and set out to track down those responsible.
On December 15, 2024, the collision and sinking of two fuel oil tankers in the Kerch Strait caused one of the most devastating environmental disasters in the history of the Black Sea. Six months later, the tankers lying on the seabed are still leaking fuel oil, and of the thousands of volunteers who initially took part in the cleanup, only a few dozen remain along a 30-kilometer stretch of beach. The film was shot on the Taman Peninsula in early summer 2025, against the backdrop of a formally lifted, yet in reality already underway, beach season. In the face of scarce resources, the departure of their own leaders, and the daily release of fuel oil, the volunteers talk about themselves, rescue animals, combat the ignorance of those around them, and try to find the motivation to continue their fight against a disaster that at times seems endless.
The young businessman Ilya is trying to start the production of inexpensive, but high-quality coffins and establish a legal client-oriented approach in his small ritual company in the Kaluga region, despite the corruption and criminalization of this market sector.
The life of the heroes flows on its own until they receive the message: "Attention! Volunteers are required!". Wherever the Lisa Alert volunteers are, they go on a search, especially when the life of a lost child depends on it. The film, created by students of the Moscow School of Cinema in 360 format, takes the viewer to the center of the events of the search operation, showing the path that each of the characters takes to achieve one important task — so that everyone else receives the message "Found. Alive!".
After three teenagers died of an overdose, artist and activist Katrin Nenasheva organized a self-help group called "Teens and Cats". In it, teenagers share their difficulties and support each other. Initially, at the meetings of the group, they talked about how to cope with drug addiction, later to this was added a discussion of mental illnesses, bullying, violence, selfharma.
Since 2020 organizers of “Returning the Names” have been repeatedly denied authorization. In Moscow, the main public readings are effectively banned, formally due to lingering COVID-era restrictions. In 2022 Russia’s Supreme Court liquidated the International Memorial, and pressure on the memory movement intensified. With mass gatherings impossible, activists seek legal ways to keep the ritual alive. “Returning the Names” is an annual commemoration in which participants read aloud the names of people executed during the Great Terror. Since 2007, thousands have joined across Russia and abroad on the eve of the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression. Traditionally Muscovites gathered at the Solovetsky Stone on Lubyanka Square, opposite the security services’ headquarters. Now the readings scatter across the city, during historical walks or in forests at mass graves. With no publicity, amid fear and the risk of prosecution, dozens take part, and their number keeps growing.
On March 1, Alexei Navalny's funeral took place in Moscow, with thousands gathering to bid farewell to the politician. The day before, Moscow police erected metal fence corridors in the Maryino district and deployed hundreds of security forces and paddy wagons. The funeral service, held at the Church of the 'Assuage My Sorrows' icon, lasted less than 20 minutes. Only family members were permitted to approach the coffin. After the body was lowered into the ground, police allowed the public to say their final goodbyes to the opposition leader. Lines leading to the church and Borisovskoye Cemetery stretched for several hundred meters, and participants in the farewell procession walked through Maryino, chanting slogans such as 'Freedom for political prisoners,' 'No to war,' and 'Navalny is a hero of Russia.' Mediazona accompanied the crowd along the entire route.
