Nikita Kartsev

"Closing" is a film almanac made up of nine verses. Instead of a rap beat, there is beer, rain, a beach, a zoo, random conversations, and a city that lives its own life. These are not stories with a beginning and an end, but statements written into the rhythm of the festival, where cinema becomes a way to be together and a way to be alone. Any almanac is a film cypher: everyone goes to the microphone, says their piece, and leaves, leaving room for someone else. "Closing" is exactly that: a collection of voices in which you can hear laughter, fatigue, love, and meaninglessness. This is a film about how cinema closes the day and opens the night.

Five aspiring directors, five short stories about the discovery of cinema. Each short story is an independent story exploring how cinema begins, how it influences us and where the line between the screen and reality lies. The film almanac has the widest range of genres, themes, geography of authors, time of action and even frame format. It can be a short sketch from the set, where the lighting technician suddenly changes places and importance with the most influential auteur director; preparation for the first film screening in Rus'; a conversation between friends immediately after the film; a story of a difficult choice between creative freedom and a career; and finally, a free interpretation of the 1986 film about the life of a simple fisherman from Kaliningrad.

Two are locked in an apartment on the eve of Victory Day. Where others see fireworks, they hear explosions and air raid alerts.

The filmmaker explores the city as a space of constant renewal, where every act of making is followed by demolition. Together they form an unstable closed system, where everything either bears witness or breeds unease. That unease is sharpened not only by the wait for a son’s birth and the rethinking of what it is to be a father, a husband, a man; the world beyond the frame feels unreliable too. Every object that enters the frame has a double life: an outer, literal role (a scaffolding, a hotel room, a balcony, a pavement, the inside of a bus, a poster on a wall, a mother’s womb) and an inner, hidden one, which gives the film its title: Hideaway.

The documentary series tells about the history of the new Russian cinema in the context of events that changed Russia forever. The narrative is built in chronological order: from 1992, when the first film was released, where "Russia" was listed in the output data instead of "USSR", to the present. Directors, actors and producers will share their memories of the path in Russian cinema. Among them are Fyodor Bondarchuk, Gosha Kutsenko, Evgeny Tsyganov, Zhora Gooseberry, Pyotr Buslov, Elena Lyadova, Vladimir Khotinenko, Valeria Guy Germanika, Sergey Selyanov, Egor Konchalovsky and many others.