How I Cheated on God

A dream about a young man, a girl and a retired colonel.

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.

Having got through a rape, a convent novice tries to find God again.

An experimental film about the Victory Parade in Russia as a terrible ritual that monopolizes memory and conjures time. The holiday goes into the past to justify the present.

"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.

Four friends convene at a café and engage in a peculiar game entitled "Empty Space". Thereafter, their paths diverge for a prolonged period. Each endeavours to find self-realisation through various forms of creative activity, seeking to impose their minor and superfluous art upon a vast and indifferent world.

Artem and Tanya are a young couple who separated a few weeks ago. Despite the breakup, they continue to live together in a rented apartment, unable to separate. Despite the chasm of disappointment and misunderstanding that has arisen, strong feelings remain between the couple. Another argument shatters the unbearable circumstances of their protracted separation. However, the question of "how to be together" hangs over the lovers like an unsettling shadow of indecipherability. Trying to answer it, they spend a long night in the confined space of their apartment. Recalling a past they can no longer return and imagining a future that frightens them with its uncertainty, Tanya and Artem wish to grasp the present, where they can live happily together.

On the eve of the celebration of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, the authorities are weakening the mask regime as part of the pandemic. On Red Square in Moscow, everything is being prepared for the holiday, which was originally supposed to be cancelled. Parallel to these events, the country is preparing for the planned elections on constitutional amendments.

The story of a young man Serezha, who long ago moved to Moscow from his small provincial town. He has gotten used to the role of a metropolitan resident, listens to modern music, dresses brightly and feels great. But today Seryozha realized that something had broken inside him, some mysterious illness had appeared, giving no rest, changing his entire habitual life.

Materialized censorship penetrates reality, encroaching on man and nature. Experimental study of the limits of prohibition.

Nikita lives alone on a summer cottage near a forest. Spending almost all his time there, he builds a special relationship with nature. But the whole idyll is disrupted when Nikita’s father decides to change his ascetic lifestyle and sell the plot.

Pasha has just come back from the army. Misha is evading mobilization. akin in their loneliness they have no luck meeting each other.

A film-journey through fleeting and tender dreams, shot with a “loving” video camera.