Tatyana Zhuravleva

A slice of life among Russian intelligentsia on the eve of WWII. A haunting reminder of Stalin's psychotic purge of 1938 and the nightmarish German siege of Leningrad.

Srubov is a part of CHEKA, the secret police Lenin established after the Bolshevik Revolution. They arrest, interview for a minute, try in ten seconds, and execute intellectuals, aristocrats, Jews, clergy, and their families. In the building basement, five people at a time are shot as they stand naked facing wooden doors. No one to remember their last words; no martyrs, just anonymous bodies. Daily, the kangaroo court, the executions, the loading of bodies onto wagons. Srubov is cold, distant, sexually dysfunctional, and a deep thinker, hated by former friends and his family. As he tries to reason the nature of revolution and the purpose of CHEKA, he slowly goes mad.

Eight years after his family was murdered he has returned home to bury his past and discover his future.

A woman living a difficult life suddenly finds love.

Mefody, a wise master, comes to a weird village one day to teach local men wisdom and life. The strange thing about the village is all the men living there are of different nationalities: German, Jewish, Ukrainian, Russian, Uzbek, Gypsy etc.. Mefodi teaches all them the way to understand each other, he speaks about music, cabala, fairy tales, sex etc. Finally all of them become even more friendly to each other and find success in life.

A fourth-grader is looking for her father with the help of a friend.