Valery Zhukov

Devoted to the last days of Soviet writer, poet, and Gulag survivor Varlam Shalamov, this film follows the efforts of two of Shalamov’s most devoted admirers to preserve the author’s legacy. Having lost his sight and hearing and living in a retirement home, he carried on doing the only thing that mattered to him — writing — until his final breath. This film is a testament to the value of writings that tell the unpalatable truths of the 20th century. To evoke the gritty texture of the Soviet world, Sententia is shot on 16mm black and white film.

The word "rok" in Russian means both rock music and fate. The film's heroes, who want to conquer the musical Olympus of Moscow, are accompanied by both. This troika is not even a group yet, not a team, and probably not even friends. But that's at the beginning. The further the heroes leave home, the more dangerous their adventures and the people they met on the way become, and the more strongly the children change inside. The film is a journey, a search of the self, where the road to the dream is the greatest, most dangerous and unforgettable adventure in the life of the young provincial musicians.

Spring 1942. Moscow schoolgirl Katya is corresponding with a cadet of the naval school Kostya, who is unknown to her. When sent to the front, his echelon must pass through Moscow, and they have a chance to meet ... Our days. Muscovite Katya, a talented violinist and a wild child, without realizing it, begins to follow in the footsteps of the history of Katya and Kostya, her peers from the war years. Will she be able to finish an amazing teenage love story that began years ago?

The film is based on the life of Marina Tsvetaeva, one of the most tragic and greatest poets of the 20th century. The authors follow her in Russia, then in immigration in Prague and Paris, and then her return to Russia where she committed a suicide a few month after her arrival.

The author of The Kolyma Stories and many other works spent 17 years in the terrible GULAG camps on Kolyma. The term that Varlam Tikhonovich received in 1929 was for distributing Lenin's letter to the congress, in which he criticized Stalin. Nowadays, this letter is called the "testament of Lenin"…