Vasiliy Shukshin

In this the fourth episode, “Battle of Berlin,” the Soviets start their assault on Berlin, and Stalin negotiates with the other Allies.

In July 1942, in the Second World War, the rearguard of the Russian army protects the bridgehead of the Don River against the German army while the retreating Russian troops cross the bridge. While they move back to the Russian territory through the countryside, the soldiers show their companionship, sentiments, fears and heroism to defend their motherland.

In Berlin, Lieutenant Yartsev's infantry and Tzvetaev's battery fight their way in the U-Bahn. Captain Neustroev's company is selected to hoist the Victory Banner atop the Reichstag.

A thief named Egor, having served a term in prison, goes to the country to meet his pen-friend Lyuba, a kind genial village woman. Egor comes to love Lyuba sincerely. Now he has friends, work and a beloved woman, he decides to break with his criminal past and start a new life. However, his former criminal associates interfere brutally.

Klavdia Vavilova, a Red Army cavalry commissar, is waylaid by an unexpected pregnancy. She stays with a Jewish family to give birth and is softened somewhat by the experience of family life.

This five part epic war drama gives a dramatized detailed account of Soviet Union's war against Nazi Germany during world war two. Each of the five parts represents a separate major eastern front campaign.

The story of a man who routinely dodges all responsibility, bemoans fate, spends his days boozing, and refuses to work. The act of playing long-lost father to a pretty teenager spurs him to turn over a new leaf.

On their way to a Black Sea resort, a Siberian tractor driver and his wife make new friends and take a detour to Moscow.

The Killers is a 1956 student film by the Soviet and Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky and his fellow students Marika Beiku and Aleksandr Gordon. The film is based on the short story "The Killers" by Ernest Hemingway, written in 1927. It was Tarkovsky's first film, produced when he was a student at the State Institute of Cinematography.

The war was over. Like many of her female friends, Sasha Potapova was left a widow. It was hard living without a man’s shoulder to lean on, without love and affection, yet no one had ever seen her crying or despairing. For her strong character, the fellow-villagers elected her a collective farm chairwoman. The work, with its cares and worries, helped all but forget about her personal misfortune and woman’s loneliness. And then she fell in love – a bittersweet, unshared love, but happy anyway…

The village teacher asks the driver Gorlov to take her son, a first-grader, to the city and buy him a school suit. Reluctantly yielding to the woman, the driver will make friends with the boy during the trip. He will change the attitude not only towards this boy, but also towards people in general...

The escaped prisoner Kolya comes to a lonely hut lost in the forest where grandfather Nikitich whiles away his days. The grandfather hospitably receives the guy, feeds him. The owner and the guest are imbued with sympathy for each other. Kolya tells Nikitich about how he escaped from prison, and the grandfather tells about his sin committed in his youth. In the morning, while Nikitich is sleeping, Kolya leaves the hut, taking his grandfather’s gun.

A story about a few men and the autumn of their lives...

Eight men, eight stories about the morning after party...

The film is based on the early autobiographical stories of Vasily Makarovich Shukshin. A bright, emotionally rich movie about the childhood of a boy from a distant Altai village, about his family — his sister and mother, about work, holidays, joys and troubles of ordinary Russian peasants during the Great Patriotic War...

Grusha's husband has left her and she is now a single parent to her adolescent son Vitya. Her brother Nikolay is determined to hook her up with his friend Vladimir. For Grusha and Vladimir to have privacy to build up their relationship, Nikolay decides his nephew Vitya needs to stay out of the way, so he urges Vitya to come live with his family for a while. However, Grusha's not so sure about the arrangement.

The film is a reflection on the responsibility of man to other people, native nature and the world around us, the problem of preserving Lake Baikal, on the banks of which a large construction project has unfolded. The first half of the 60s of the XX century, the story of the love of young Lena Barmina to an adult respectable person, bearing on his shoulders a heavy burden of responsibility for the activities of a huge enterprise. Construction engineer Chernykh and Lena, the daughter of a scientist, are doing everything to save the lake from harmful and unjustified plums. A difficult relationship develops between them and soon Lena realizes that she is in love. But after learning that Chernykh is married, the girl leaves...

A film anthology featuring three stories: 1) “The Capron Christmas Tree” - Two men and a city dandy, courting a village girl, return home on New Year’s Eve, with the dandy’s nylon Christmas tree gift offending the men. 2) “A Ticket for the Second Showing” - Timofey, an elderly village swindler, regrets his life and prays to Saint Nicholas for a second chance. 3) “The Version” - A rural braggart recounts his city adventure with a restaurant manager, challenging disbelievers to join him on a repeat trip.

1919 year. There is a civil war in Siberia. Taking advantage of the complete confusion, Admiral Kolchak wants to export part of the country's gold reserves abroad. At the very last moment the Bolsheviks find out about it. They decide to intercept the train, but do not have time to properly prepare the operation... The girl Nadya, in whom the head of the train is passionately in love, can save the situation. Several kilometers of railway tracks to the border become a battlefield between white and red.

Yevgeny Yevstigneyev, Georgy Burkov, Leonid Yarmolnik, Galina Polskikh in a sad comedy by Sergey Nikonenko based on Vasily Shukshin’s short stories “Touches on the Portrait”, “The Stubborn One”, “The Strong Go Further”. Nikolai Knyazev works in a TV repair shop. God has blessed him with golden hands and heart, yet the majority of his fellow-town folk think he’s a bit nutty. And for a good reason: he’s constructing a perpetual motion machine, for years has been writing a philosophical treatise, dreaming of world fame and looking down on the other inhabitants of this sinful earth. But no matter how hard he is looking, he can’t see where his happiness (that is, post-office employee Lyuba) lies…

Mid 20th century. Industry is developing rapidly and the need for workers in factories is growing. After graduating from the tenth year, Viktor Chernyshyov, now a city dweller, did not bother to continue his education and went to the plant as a turner. He considered it quite normal that the guys enthusiastically listened to the stories of his peer Kolya, a lounger who boasted of victories over women, and participated in his dubious amusements. Only one of them, Pyotr — a real worker, a doctor, tried to reason with Kolya and the others.

There was an important event in the Khudyakov family - the eldest daughter gave birth to a son. However, the young mother flatly refuses to name the child's father. In order to give his grandson a middle name, Khudyakov instructs his son to find the father of the newborn.

The years of civil war. Teacher Lyubov Yarovaya is on the side of the revolution. Her husband Mikhail is a White Guard officer. Mikhail fiercely fights against Soviet power. The struggle in the woman's soul between her love for her husband and her revolutionary duty ends with the victory of the latter. She passes a harsh and merciless sentence on Mikhail...

Each of the short stories is based on either one or several stories by a wonderful Russian writer. The heroes are ordinary people “of the people”, contemporaries of Shukshin, all of whose life’s ups and downs are inextricably linked with their country - the Soviet Union of the 60s-70s. The main thing that unites both the works themselves and the films made is a whole gallery of the brightest images and characters, a story about such different destinies and differently meaningful lives, a story in the center of which is invariably Man, with his love, quests, weaknesses and victories.