Acting
In 16th-century Russia in the grip of chaos, Ivan the Terrible strongly believes he is vested with a holy mission. Believing he can understand and interpret the signs, he sees the Last Judgment approaching. He establishes absolute power, cruelly destroying anyone who gets in his way. During this reign of terror, Philip, the superior of the monastery on the Solovetsky Islands, a great scholar and Ivan's close friend, dares to oppose the sovereign's mystical tyranny. What follows is a clash between two completely opposite visions of the world, smashing morality and justice, God and men. A grand-scale film with excellent leading roles by Mamonov and Yankovsky. An allegory of Stalinist Russia
100 years ago, the Russian Empire ... Christmas Eve. December plugs, holiday celebrations, balls and modest luxury holidays, titled nobles and ordinary peasants, the royal family and the soldiers of the First World War, progressive poets and the first skaters - everything was different, except ... the holiday. People prepared, lived, believed dreaming and waiting for this miracle - Christmas!
Young Russian Prince Yaroslav fights the robbers, tribes and the invaders. He is the first to unite Russian lands and to create the original Russian state.
The action takes place shortly after the end of the Second World War in the Siberian hinterland, among Russians and Germans with damaged personal stories and a strange transformation: the victors seem to be crawling into the skins of the defeated, and vice versa. Ignat, is the embodiment of the larger-than-life image of the Soviet victorious warrior who, in fact, proves to be shell-shocked, sick and broken, although not completely destroyed. Trains become fetish for the heroes of the film, and speed becomes a mania; they virtually become one with their steam engines, while the machines take on human names. The heroes set up an almost fatal race in the Siberian forest, risking their own lives and those of others.
Nathaniel, a reclusive network administrator immersed in the digital world, falls in love with a girl he only knows online. To meet her in person, he does a series of crazy things. He flies to Novosibirsk, to the middle of nowhere, where he discovers a third world—a world of absolute silence at night, where the nearest power outlet is two hours away. It's a world of unhurried conversations and tall pine trees, a world of grass and skies that doesn't exist in the city.
Nikolai Kazantsev arrives at the mysterious estate of Count Vladimir Pazurkevich, a young man intending to study fine arts in Italy, but lacking the means to do so, he takes a chance on an adventure! Introducing himself as a professor, Kazantsev tries to pretend convincingly that he is studying the Count's extensive library, while at the same time actively hitting on Pazurkevich's fiancée, the beautiful Anna. Strange events taking place at the estate draw the guest into the whirlpool of a mystical and eerie story...
