Vladimir Demidov

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!

The governor and his retinue, by ridiculous chance, fly into space on an uncontrolled spacecraft. From this moment begins their amazing journey to another "charming planet." There they meet people who live in harmony with nature. It would seem, live and rejoice. But the governor thinks only about how to take this “planet” into his hands, and he has a plan to seize power ...

The social ferment in late 19th century Russia which led to the 1917 Russian Revolution is movingly portrayed in this lengthy historical drama, which is very faithful to the 1907 novel The Mother by the celebrated Marxist writer Maxim Gorky (1868-1936). In the story, "the mother" has no other recourse than to watch her decent, kindly husband turn into an animalistic, drunken brute as a result of working in the inhuman conditions of a steel mill in the town of Sormovo. When he begins to express his suppressed rage by beating her, she is defended by her teenaged son Pavel. After his father's death, Pavel is forced to go to work in the same factory. However, Pavel and his friends begin investigating Marxism and socialist thought, and work to organize their fellow workers.

To cure a man of his tendency to disbelieve people bringing him any kind of good news, God fulfils the man's wish to have a baby, but, instead of his wife, God makes him pregnant.

Grigory Bozovkin, in his youth, beat up a man out of jealousy and was put under investigation. By escaping from the prison cell with the passport of the deceased, Grigory thereby severed all ties with the past. But one day he met Natalya and fell in love with her. And now, awaiting the expiration of the statute of limitations for what he committed.

The film is set in 1913 Russia during the celebrations of the Tricentennial Anniversary of the Romanov Dynasty. Rich Russian merchants are celebrating their wealth by gambling and playing poker. They are traveling aboard the luxurious cruise liner "St. Nikolai" on Volga river, oblivious to the fact that several gangs of crooks and con-artists are stealing their money in the game. Their target is the wealthiest Russian tycoon Satanovsky.