It Was In May

The second half of the 1950s. A new microdistrict is being built on the outskirts of the city. A group of guys - graduates of a craft school - is sent to the construction site. Also on the construction site arrives a group of girls from the village. The youth collective is fused, sympathy and love are born...

The second World War echoes throughout the whole Khutsiyev's oeuvre. The director himself did not participate in the war: "The thing is, I didn't fight. I had been a sickly boy, so I was turned down because I still looked like a child. This is sort of like a debt I've been repaying ever since". In "People of 1941", Khutsiyev recites his favourite pieces by war poets and invokes documentary footage.

Having returned from the army, 20-year-old Sergei settles down at the thermal power station and merges into ordinary life. Every day he meets and spends time with childhood friends — the young family man Slava and the merry fellow Nikolai, and once at first sight he falls in love with a stranger on the bus. A lyrical story about a generation of young people entering adulthood, a reappraisal of values, life principles, traditions in culture and art.

The story unfolds in an industrial town where a young and charming literature teacher arrives, assigned to teach at an evening school. One of the boys from the metallurgical plant falls in love with the educated girl, but communication between the two young people turns out to be quite challenging.

About one day of a large mining family. In the center of the picture is a veteran, a former miner, and now a pensioner Panteleimon Dmitriyevich Grinin, who on Victory Day decided to introduce children to his “lady of the heart” hairdresser Zinaida. The action lasts only a day, but a lot happens during this time with the sons, daughters-in-law, daughter and Zinaida...

The true story of the Soviet intelligence officer Nikolai Kuznetsov, who, behind enemy lines in Ukraine, infiltrated Hitler's headquarters, kidnapped the commander of the punitive troops and executed the imperial adviser.

Lena, a woman in her late twenties, loves her boyfriend, but in time comes to see that their relationship serves no useful function. What's more, she sees that her friends are for the most part empty-headed lackeys, causing her to wonder just what is the point of her life.

A group of Moldavian folk musicians compete for the top Soviet prize. Singer Lyana loves the flautist, but he's fallen afoul of the group leader.

The movie is set during the last days of a foreign intervention against Soviet Russia. Police are searching everywhere for a Bolshevik named Brodsky but cannot find him. Meanwhile, a man named Michel Voronov serves as a teacher to a rich woman's son, Zhen'ka.

In 1920, just 3 years after the October revolution, the peoples had to decide between conforming to Bolshevism or national self-determination. In that torn-apart-time, one man, the comedian Volodya, tries to mediate, not between different ideologies, but social life and art. While others just want to wash away their gloom, he reflects on the everyday sorrows and the role of art in that time of changes.

At the end of the Second World War, Fedor is demobilized and returns home where he meets a homeless boy, small Fedor. They decide to live together. The adult works in the building trade and the boy goes to school and looks after the house. They get on very well until Natacha arrives in big Fedor's life. After marrying big Fedor, Natacha tries to win the child's love. But he remains hostile.

Virtually unseen since its Soviet television broadcast in 1971, the film, Peter Rollberg writes, is “devoted to the anniversary of the Paris commune, mixing historical footage with images of present-day Paris.”

A heroic story about Soviet sailors fighting Nazis during WWII.

Originally called World '68, later retitled The World of Today Romm’s film was conceived as an impassioned, large-scale essay on the origins of the 20th century and the subsequent reality the disappointed director felt slipping away from him. The film itself slipped away from him and was left unfinished at the time of his death. His younger colleagues, Marlen Khutsiev, Elem Klimov and German Lavrov, completed the film from the elements he left behind in addition to segments from Ordinary Fascism, closing the film with Romm’s ultimately optimistic outlook: "And still I believe that man is sensible..."

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.