Karen Shakhnazarov

Fitil is a popular Soviet/Russian television satirical/comedy short film series which ran for about 500 episodes. Some of the episodes were aimed at children, and were called Фитилёк, Fitilyok, Little Fuse. Each issue contained from the few short segments: documentary, fictional and animated ones. Directed by various artists, including Leonid Gaidai who presented his famous trio of Nikulin, Vitsin and Morgunov into the cast. It was called in USSR as "the anecdotes from the Soviet government".

KVN is a Russian humour TV show and competition where teams compete by giving funny answers to questions and showing prepared sketches. The programme was first aired by the First Soviet Channel on November 8, 1961. Eleven years later, in 1972, when few programmes were being broadcast live, Soviet censors found the students' impromptu jokes offensive and anti-Soviet and banned KVN. The show was revived fourteen years later during the Perestroika era in 1986, with Alexander Maslyakov as its host. It is one of the longest-running TV programmes on Russian Television. It also has its own holiday on November 8, the birthday of the game, which KVN players celebrate every year since it was announced and widely celebrated for the first time in 2001.

Gordei Kabachkov, a professional con man, decided to pursue a career in science and was very successful. Having settled in a certain Institute of Ancient Culture, he easily wraps his finger around the numerous "kind men" - members of the academic council - and defends his thesis. Using his "talents" and the kindness of the staff of the Institute of Ancient Culture, Kabachkov makes a rapid take-off on the career ladder...

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In late-19th-century Russian high society, St. Petersburg aristocrat Anna Karenina enters into a life-changing affair with the dashing Count Alexei Vronsky. An eight part adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" from Vronsky's point of view.

Ivan Mirosnikov, a cheeky young man in the Gorbachev era, is trying to figure out what to do with his life (he's not in college, and the 2-year mandatory military service is looming large ahead of him). Meanwhile, he lives with his divorced mother, and works as a courier at a Russian newspaper. Through his job, he meets patronizing Professor Kuznetzov and his rebellious daughter Katya. To annoy the professor, Ivan claims to have an affair with Katya. To his surprise, Katya backs his story up.

WWII, 1945. After barely surviving a battle with a mysterious, ghostly-white German Tiger tank, Red Army Sergeant Ivan Naydenov becomes obsessed with its destruction.

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The films hero is a metal worker named Ignat who is as strong and tough as the steel that his sprawling factory produces in the Ural Mountains. Its a great cheerless environment; life is arduous and dangerous; conditions at the plant are nearly subhuman. The only excitement in the grimy industrial town is provided by robbing a train at gunpoint or stealing sheep from the Bashkiri tribe. The most renowned diversion, however, is the annual fist fight between the strongest metal worker and the strongest miner from the region. Against his better judgment, but with the support of his co-workers, Ignat decides to take part in this perilous venture.

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The ruthless extremist Bazgaev responsible for terrorist attacks which lead to deaths of hundreds of civilians, among them school children, is planning new actions. A group of security officers is to track and destroy him. Based on a true story.

There is no single truth in love. Each treads their own path. Which should take precedence – passion or duty? How do we choose? And who gets to judge? These are the eternal questions, remorselessly thrust upon us by life. Anna Karenina made her choice, leaving her son Sergei to grow up struggling to understand why his mother took such a tragic and terrible path, and Count Vronsky haunted by the memory of the woman for whose death he still blames himself 30 years later. In 1904, in the aftermath of one of the battles of the Russo-Japanese war, Sergei Karenin and Alexei Vronsky find themselves thrown together in a remote Manchurian village, where fate offers them a chance to return to the events long past and, finally, to find the answers both have long been seeking.

In the summer of 1944, the Nazi Armies prepare a massive Tank Division named 'Viking" for the offensive on occupied Russian land. The Russian Army's special group of seven snipers named "Zvezda" is sent for a reconnaissance operation behind the enemy lines in the back of the Nazi Tank Division. Two previous Russian groups never came back. The seven Russians know that they are going to an almost certain Death for the sake of Victory.

The heroes of this program have conquered many creative peaks, they are popular and loved by the audience. And everyone has their own melody that warms the soul, helps to love and believe in the future. The heroes will have to meet face to face with their "secret song" - because they do not know what kind of musical gift their relatives, friends or colleagues are preparing for them. The star guests of the show are in for unexpected surprises and vivid emotions, and their fans will have a unique opportunity to learn about the important moments that changed the fate of their idols and hear touching stories.

A new doctor from Moscow arrives at a provincial mental institution. His interest is the peculiarities of the psyche of a patient who believes that he is Yakov Yurovsky, the man who assassinated the last Russian tsar. In the course of their conversations it transpires that the patient is a kind of philosopher, not without a gift for suggestion. In a while the doctor himself falls under his patient’s influence: he tends to relive that fatal night of June 16-17, 1918 when, without any investigation or trial, Tsar Nicholas II, who had recently abdicated, was murdered, together with his wife, daughters and incurably ill heir. Soon the doctor realizes that the tragedy of the last Russian tsar is in part his own tragedy, too...

Going on a business trip, the hero of the film suddenly finds himself in a fantastic city. It is very similar to our world, only the hidden absurdity of everyday life here has become apparent.

Based on a novella by the well-known Soviet writer, Emmanuil Kazakevich "Two in the Steppe" and the war diaries of Konstantin Simonov. It's the summer of 1942, communications officer Ogarkov and private Dzhurabaev are fighting their way through the German encirclement. Finding themselves in difficult situations, they learn to trust one another, becoming true friends in the process.

A music student is expelled from school because he loves jazz, a kind of music that represents the US capitalism. He hires two street musicians to form a dixie band, and goes from one city to another trying to gain fame.

One day in the life of doctor.

Day of the Full Moon, a series of vignettes from Russia past and present, summons the spirit of Ophuls’ La Ronde, Altman’s Nashville and Short Cuts, and the time-shifting strategies of Resnais (Mon Oncle d’Amérique) to tell provocative, connected stories illustrating the waltz of years and whim of memory. In 1948, a young man, a boy, and a waiter are captivated during the full moon by a mysterious woman in a lilac dress. The effects of this event ripple across the years, washing over more than 80 characters, including a disc jockey, a fairy princess, a gangster, Alexander Pushkin, and a nostalgic dog. But which of these are dreams, and which reality? Director Shakhnazarov continues his career-long focus on the intersection of past and present with this mysterious, exhilarating mosaic of humankind, which in the end both seduces and satisfies.