Svetlana Obidina

Somewhere in Northern Russia in a small Russian Orthodox monastery lives an unusual man whose bizarre conduct confuses his fellow monks, while others who visit the island believe that the man has the power to heal, exorcise demons and foretell the future.

The action takes place shortly after the end of the Second World War in the Siberian hinterland, among Russians and Germans with damaged personal stories and a strange transformation: the victors seem to be crawling into the skins of the defeated, and vice versa. Ignat, is the embodiment of the larger-than-life image of the Soviet victorious warrior who, in fact, proves to be shell-shocked, sick and broken, although not completely destroyed. Trains become fetish for the heroes of the film, and speed becomes a mania; they virtually become one with their steam engines, while the machines take on human names. The heroes set up an almost fatal race in the Siberian forest, risking their own lives and those of others.

Returning to Saint Petersburg after a long exile, the dashing Yakovlev, a retired army officer, makes a comfortable living by winning other people's duels. An enigmatic, focused, and extremely skilled professional, he leaves a trail of dead bodies behind him as he swirls through polite society, frequently called upon to wield a pistol as a surrogate in duels at dawn. But when Yakovlev meets the naïve young Prince Tuchov and his beautiful sister, Princess Martha, the normally cold-hearted mercenary is surprised by hitherto undetected emotions. What transpires uncovers a series of revelations about his past and his present self.

Dovlatov charts six days in the life of a brilliant, ironic writer who saw far beyond the rigid limits of 70s Soviet Russia. Sergei Dovlatov fought to preserve his own talent and decency with poet and writer Joseph Brodsky, while watching his artist friends got crushed by the iron-willed state machinery.

From his childhood in Russia to his last days in California, the tumultuous ininerary and bathed in melancholy of the legendary pianist and composer Serguei Rachmaninov. This film is based on the legend that Rachmaninoff received a bouquet of lilacs from an unknown admirer after every performance. He emigrated to the United States, and after an interval, began to receive the mysterious lilacs again.

Fedot the Shooter is sent by the Czar to find some special food for the foreign ambassador's visit. During the hunt Fedot meets his love Marusya - the magical bird-woman. Evil Czar and his no-less-evil sidekick General with the help of the local witch Yaga try to eliminate Fedot by giving him more and more complex quests and to take Marusya to Tsar's palace. Marusya helps Fedot to solve the quests successfully.

Ilya lives in Moscow; Nina lives in St. Petersburg. Ilya has a beautiful wife and a daughter; Nina's husband is an artist, and they have a young son. Nina occasionally travels to Moscow to see her partners in the publishing industry. Ilya sometimes comes to St. Petersburg on business. But more often they are in the train between St. Petersburg and Moscow just to see each other. Because they have an affair.

Somewhere in the Urals, between the European and the Asian parts of Russia, there is a stele called "Europe-Asia". Professional swindlers have taken a liking to this place. For several days in a row a wedding is taking place by the roadside. They hide under the veil of the bride, in the costumes of the groom and witnesses, cynically taking in turn every traveler. Fraudsters "spin" the travelers for cash gifts to the newlyweds, generously feeding the guests with diluted alcohol. Under the guidance of the "mother of the bride" the group plays out incredibly funny criminal plays, and their spectators, accomplices and victims are PR people and political technologists, Chinese and Hungarians, policemen and bandits, beggar nomad children and, of course, foreign tourists nostalgic for the once abandoned Russia....