Nikolai Afanasyev

A staging of the play of the same name at the State Academic Maly Theater of the USSR.

The action takes place in 1714 in the London royal palace of St. James. The Duchess of Marlborough, the favorite of the weak-willed queen, skillfully rules the state. Her political opponent, former minister Lord Bolingbroke, dreaming of restoring his influence at court, successfully wages a cunning war against the duchess, using the rivalry between the queen and the duchess of Marlborough, who are in love with the young officer Mesham.

A magical tale about a poor musician who one day stumbled upon a wondrous market stall. An old man there was selling incredible items — a magic mirror, an invisibility cap, a self-setting tablecloth… Among these enchanted objects was a marvelous self-playing flute. The old man gave the poor young musician the flute and the magic mirror, on one condition: they had to be returned in a year. A greedy rich man also took a liking to these magical things and, through deceit and trickery, tried to steal them — even throwing the musician into a dungeon. But what the greedy man didn’t know was that clever, enchanted things only bring happiness to a kind heart — and no wisdom at all to a foolish one.

Based on the book "Ambassador Extraordinary" by the Tur Brothers. The film tells about the life and work of the first Soviet woman diplomat (the prototype was A. M. Kollontai). In the difficult years of the Great Patriotic War, Elena Koltsova, Soviet ambassador to a neutral Scandinavian country, works hard to expose the provocations of Hitler's Germany.

Pensioner organizes a meeting of former classmates fifty years after graduating from school. Many are no longer alive, but those who came touchingly remember their distant childhood and youth, the joys and sorrows of bygone years.

Former student Raskolnikov is pushed to murder when struggling to pay the rent on his apartment. When the murder is being investigated by the police, Raskolnikov struggles between trying to hide his guilt and the pressure to confess.

The film is dedicated to the great Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893). It tells of the last twenty years of the great master’s life, of his friendship with Baroness von Meck, an outstanding woman of her time, who for many years was Tchaikovsky’s guardian angel. The film also includes retrospections of the composer’s childhood and adolescent years, with Tchaikovsky’s life poetically recounted against the background of fragments from his operas and ballets performed by the best Russian musicians.

Aneta, the serf actress of Knyaz Skalinsky, amazes with her beauty and talented performance of Shchepin. After the performance, a frank conversation ensues between them. The interlocutor learns that Skalinsky, pursuing the actress for a long time, gave her lover — a young actor of the troupe — to the soldiers for twenty-five years. After much deliberation, Shchepin decides to help the girl, but is too late...