Idrak Mirzalizade: This Never Happened

Aspiring directors Lev Zaretski (a sadist) and Ruslan Romanov (an anime MC) will show you how to properly write a screenplay; cast actors; do a film shoot; and answer questions from annoying film festival attendees.

When rising rapper Oli finally meets his online collaborator Sasha, their weekend of hanging out turns from sweet to painfully awkward to terrifying. An underground live gig, a strange encounter with a goth girl, and finally a literal descent into hell are all captured on grainy VHS tape.

Three directors make a movie about the events of their past week. Relationships, work, and day-to-day personal struggle—the minute details still fresh on their minds—are shown with unseen crystal clarity that challenges the very notion of dramatic fiction.

A cycle of mundane violence, lust for art, and existential dread—all chronicled in an unconventional self-titled docu-horror by Nikita Lavretski, who violently edits lo-fi footage of himself from age 0 to age 16.

Igor and Sveta visit Igor's hometown. Igor wants nothing more than to spend the weekend recording a fun vlog with his girlfriend when a talk with his mom uncovers more of a pressing problem in his relationship with Sveta.

A self-proclaimed videographer prodigy sets out to lose his virginity as the 21st birthday present to himself. Not only does he manage to persuade a female acquaintance and two of her friends to come to his dacha, he makes sure they watch a retrospective of his work, and his seduction dances, in full. A terrifying night lies ahead of them.

A short documentary by Nikita Lavretski.

Elena is a student in Minsk. She is having an intense but self-destructive love affair with Viktor. When Elena's father goes to prison she has to take charge of his business dealings to help him. She drives repeatedly into the restricted zone at Chernobyl, behind the wheel of a truck, in order to smuggle contaminated steel. The conflicts with Viktor escalate, and Elena is increasingly captivated by the zone's deceptive beauty...

Two young men are traveling through countryside on train and on foot. A night of paranoid ramblings and melancholic flashbacks reveals their reasons and underlines the tension.

An ex-couple who write poems experience a curious synchronicity online.

A psychological thriller telling the story of a hikikomori obsessed with a female vlogger. The screenplay is based on the now-deleted blog by "quickpaws321", a man obsessed with Rose from the randytaylor69 channel.

The shy Ruslan Romanov and the brash Lev Zaretski, who previously launched a film review outlet in KINOMANTRA and a moviemaking company in CINEMAGIC, now reveal their AI startup FILMTELLIGENCE with ludicrous results. No generative AI was used in the making of this work.

Lyosha Lyshenko, the enfant terrible of Russian-language stand-up, tells jokes about maniacs, the rapper Husky, and Idrak Mirzalizade's underpants, but mainly he performs tricks, dances, and stunts.

Exiled director Nikita Lavretski (played by Belarusian director Sergey Kolosovski) strives to reunite with his wife across European borders. Reminiscing about the home he had to leave, he wonders whether he is stuck reliving his past forever.

Nikita and Volha have been maintaining a dysfunctional relationship for the past 8 years. In the following movie they play fictional Nikita and Volha who have only just met. Can anything be started anew at the end of history?

In this cinematic zine, directors scattered all over the world adapt to screen hilarious and poignant Belarusian news stories. Featuring phone thieves, TikTok storks, the tiniest castle in the world, and victims of the depression epidemic.