Alexander Askoldov. The Fate of the Commissar

Based on investigations by independent journalists, the film documents the origins of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s private wealth and subsequent rise to power, demonstrating his ascension to the Russian presidency after an alliance built in the early 1990s between himself, certain friends from Leningrad’s KGB, and mafia groups.

Young man is given an opportunity to live his life over again.

The provincial Russian town of Nerekhta is celebrating its 775th anniversary. The basis of the holiday is the legend about the local craftsman Krikutny, who was the first in the world in 1731 to fly in a balloon. Was there really the balloonist Krikutny, or was this story invented by the provincial official Sulukadzev? Whom to believe? To the text of the charter for the first ballooning or to historians who refute the reality of this event?

The film is based on three events in February 1987: the release of the film "Repentance", an exhibition-competition in the Manege of projects for the Victory Monument on Poklonnaya Gora and the 150th anniversary of the death of Alexander Pushkin.

The film is about an amazing woman, rural paramedic Anna Avzayeva, who was born on the day of the formation of the USSR. She went through the front and the Stalinist camps, where she dreamed of a model of heaven on earth in the spirit of N.G. Chernyshevsky's utopias, about which she wrote to the newspaper. Like the heroine of her idol N.G. Chernyshevsky, Vera Pavlovna from the novel "What to Do?", Anna Andreevna has dreams in which she meets V.I. Lenin.

The subjective-personal context is perceived as an objective document of the era, a true testimony of the time when it was created and experienced. The author reflects on events of different historical scale, but equally significant for a person. The film is built on the principle of montage of free associations: from memories of the grandmother and reflections on "the time of our grandmothers" to the image of Vira Kholodnaya as the embodiment of femininity, and then - at a sharp turn - to the problems of inter-ethnic conflicts.

The film is about street art in the Crimea and about artists who choose radically different paths.

During World War II the Kyiv Film Studio relocates to Ashgabat, which will provide a safe haven for many Soviet filmmakers. This is where, thousands of miles from the front line, one of the most famous war films in the history of cinema will be made.