Fridrikh Ermler

The Cutlass

The teenager Misha Polyakov, being with his mother in a Ukrainian village on vacation with his grandmother and about to return home to Petrograd, offers his best friend Genka to go with him. Suddenly, a white gang of Nikitsky bursts into the village and attacks Misha’s house, where Commissioner Polevoy lives. The purpose of Nikitskiy (aka Nikolskiy) is a dagger located at Polevoy. Saving the commissioner, Misha learns from him the history and secret of the weapon, and receives it for storage with a request to solve the secret. Having returned with adventures to Petrograd, Misha Polyakov with friends begins to unravel the riddle of the dagger, in the handle of which is encrypted text.

Great Citizen

A biography drama about Sergey Kirov, a prominent early Bolshevik leader in the Soviet Union.

Katka's Reinette Apples

A young country girl who becomes an apple seller is seduced and abandoned. She finds a protector but when he is arrested for theft she finds honest work in a factory.

The Turning Point

The film tells the story of those who took part in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, which became a turning point in the Great Patriotic War. For five months, the city resisted the Nazi offensive. Surrendering Stalingrad to the enemy would have meant losing the war, but holding on to the city seemed almost impossible.

The Parisian Cobbler

Komsomol girl Katya Karnakova, a darling of the small provincial town Old Lopsha, is seriously smitten with a fellow Komsomol and does not even try to hide this from others. After some time as a result of their affair, she becomes pregnant.

Fragment of an Empire

Director Frederick Ermler’s last silent feature and the last of four collaborations with actor Fiodor Nikitin. Nikitin plays an officer who spends a decade after the Great War as a shell-shocked amnesiac, until a glimpse of a woman through a train window sparks the return of his memory. He makes his way back to St. Petersburg, now Leningrad, a man out of time who struggles to make sense of the new society brought about by the revolution.

Smile!

A docudrama presenting the events which explain how and why Charles Spencer Chaplin made alterations to his original ending of the famous movie “Modern Times” following his encounter with the Soviet director Fridrikh Ermler.

The Great Force

Professor Lavrov, a student and follower of Michurin, is trying to refute the discoveries of the theory of heredity and is successfully working on developing a new breed of chickens with high egg production and productivity. The brave experimenter is supported by the Central Committee of the CPSU in the person of Comrade, who arrived at the experimental poultry farm.

Counterplan

The story of an effort to catch "wreckers" at work in a Soviet factory. The film’s title-song called "The Song of the Counterplan", composed by Dmitri Shostakovich, became world famous and was adapted into "Au-devant de la vie", a notable song of the French socialist movement of the 1930s.

Anton Ivanovich Gets Angry

Anton Ivanovich Voronov is a highly respected professor at the Moscow Conservatoire, who places the music of Bach above everything else and regards it as the ultimate yardstick by which other musical accomplishments must be measured. His daughter, Serafima, is an aspiring singer with great potential, and her father’s anger is aroused when she begins singing in the operetta composed by Aleksei Mukhin, thus abandoning what he considers the higher calling of opera. Mukhin’s work, however, demands a high level of ability from his soloist, and Anton Ivanovich is persuaded of the legitimacy of operetta as a musical genre when, in a dream, he is visited by Johann Sebastian Bach himself, who tells him that ‘people need all kinds of music’.

Dinner Party

A man invites people to a dinner party, but a dream and his forgetfulness get in the way.

Air Taxi

A musical romantic comedy set in Soviet Union during the first years of WWII.

Chapayev is with Us

Short propaganda film released to raise army morale during first months of war. Civil War hero and Red Army commander Vasily Chapayev (killed in 1919 by White Army officers then drowned in the Ural river) swims ashore but it's the summer of 1941. Chapayev asks who are Soviets fighting off this time, hears that it's Germans once again and then gives an inspiring speech. He is played by Boris Babochkin who famously portrayed Chapayev in 1934 biopic.

Children of the Storm

Lost movie.

The Longtime Resident

Andrei Krutikov was the first child born in the settlement of the hydroelectric station workers. The residents of the settlement named a street after him. Years passed, and the young city grew. Andrei grew up to be a mischievous, lying, and wild storyteller. But then a new boy, Borya Skalov, appeared in his class. Unintentionally, Andrei started to imitate the serious and responsible Boris, and he didn't even notice how his life began to change.

The District Secretary

A story about a Secretary of the Communist Party District Committee who is leading partisans in their fight with the Nazis during WWII.

To the Sounds of Dombras

Peasants

The peaceful life of an exemplary collective farm is being rent asunder by shortages and dissent, and a commissar is sent to uncover the source of the problems, unaware that their is actual sabotage involved.

Lad from Our Town

In the summer of 1932, Sergei Lukonin, a young man from Saratov, leaves his hometown for the distant city of Omsk to attend tank school. His fiancée, Varenka, who soon became an actress, remained in Saratov. In 1936, Sergei went to fight in the Spanish Civil War. He was wounded, taken prisoner, escaped, and returned to training battles, with June 1941 looming ahead.

Unfinished Story

The local doctor Yelizaveta Maksimovna is a beautiful woman and a wonderful sympathetic person. She is lonely, although she is cared for by a confident and promising colleague. Yelizaveta Maksimovna has one patient, a manly, full-energy ship builder Yershov, chained to the bed with a paralysis of both legs. All doctors recommend him rest, and Elizaveta Maksimovna advises to work and not feel sorry for herself. Yershov with all his heart falls in love with his doctor, and she loves him, but she does not dare to say her feelings. Ershov thinks that he has no hopes, but...

No Greater Love

The first day of the war brings tragedy to a peasant woman, Pasha. Her husband and her toddler son die before her eyes. She and the other villagers leave to go into the woods. Pasha leads the villagers to fight some German troops. Coming out victories, the partisans become a feared opponent of the Germans, with the leadership of Comrade P.

Facing the Judgement of History

Director Fridrikh Ermler brings together monarchist Vasiliy Shulgin with a nameless historian who accompanies the right wing politician on a stroll through Leningrad, confronting him with his past.

Kotovsky

Kotovsky, who went a long revolutionary way and became the recognized military commander of the cavalry troops: commander, brigade commander, commander. Six times he escaped from prison, was sentenced to death, and again escaped to become one of the most ardent warriors of the revolution. His famous equestrian brigade fought with the enemy near Kiev and the Belaya Tserkov, at Nikolaev and Odessa, and did not know defeat anywhere.

Antosha Rybkin

Before the attack on the village, captured by the Nazis, the commander decides to carry out a distraction — a concert of the front-line brigade of artists. Chef Antosha Rybkin is assigned to play the role of... a German corporal. Dressed in an enemy uniform, he gets to the rear of the enemy and helps his liberate the village.