An Ordinary History

This film is not about Oleg Yankovsky in the usual sense: not a biography of a great actor, not a review of roles. And not the sharp facts from his personal life. Although it's all in the film: a dramatic fate, unknown pages of biography. Like any great actor, he possessed a secret - he did not tell both in the movies and in life. But his main gift was not even acting. Yankovsky was talented at making people fall in love with him. I wanted to look at him again and again: that's why they loved him and still love him.

A group of impoverished Russians living in a shelter near the Volga.

Fourteen-year-old Vera Telegina sees the sea, which she had dreamed of since childhood. She is here only because her parents were repressed and she is left alone. The police chief Stavridi, having learned about the girl's misfortune, places her in a boarding school. Vera has to go through a lot. But with the concernment of new friends and sympathy of adults Vera survives until the spring of 1953, when the long-awaited telegram from her parents arrives.

The Odesa boys, Petya Bachey and Gavrik Chernoivanenko, are brave and resourceful, finding themselves at the centre of early 20th-century events leading to the October Revolution. They are joined by adult characters like sailor Rodion Zhukov, Petya’s father Vasily, Madame Storozhenko, and Gavrik’s grandfather. As they grow, they experience the revolution, civil war, and become underground fighters during WWII in occupied Odesa.

An insurance agent who moonlights as a car thief steals cars various crooks and never from the common people. He sells the stolen cars and gives the money to charity. His best friend, a cop, is assigned to bring in this modern Robin Hood.

This little-seen and little-discussed film combines animation with self-reflexive, live action segments to embody the anarchic, satiric spirit of the poet and playwright Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930). The film also showcases Sergei Yuktevich's fondness for formal experimentation. It is nominally adapted from Mayakovsky's play "The Bedbug" and his screenplay "Forget All About the Fireplace."

Andrey Pavlovich Buzykin, who makes a living by teaching at an institute and translating English literature, is cheating on his wife. Buzykin's main problem is that he's a kind man with a weak character. The lies he is telling his wife all the time are inconvincing, but he never has the courage to tell her the truth. His lover, Alla, is aware of his family life, but gets offended when, for example, he cannot meet her so that he doesn't come home late, or when he doesn't want to go home in a new jacket she gives him to avoid having to explain to his wife. Alla and Nina, Andrei's wife, both leave him, forgive him, and return to him at the same time, and Andrei continues with this kind of life, full of suffering and deceit. Finally, both women are so fed up with his lies that they don't believe him even when he is telling the truth...

Mikhail Nikolaevich Ermakov has come a long and difficult life path. At the age of nineteen, the student, the son of a worker, was sent on a Komsomol ticket to work in the Cheka. In one of the operations he was seriously wounded. And now, many years later, General Ermakov comes to Moscow and settles in the house where he spent his youth...

King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.

Senor Quexana has read so many books on chivalry that he believes that he is the knight Don Quixote de la Mancha. So Don Quixote sets off on his horse, accompanied by his squire Sancho Panza on a mule, to perform valiant deeds. They mistakenly save the Lady Altisidora who is so amused that she invites them to visit the Duke to provide some merriment at court. Among other deeds, Don Quixote frees some prisoners, who then turn upon him, and Don Quixote attacks a windmill that he imagines is a monstrous wizard.

A little Mermaid falls in love with a Prince whom she saves during a storm. Using all kinds of magical incantations in exchange for the Mermaid’s beautiful blue hair, a witch replaces her fish tail with human legs, making it possible for the Mermaid to walk and live on earth at the cost of great pain with every step she takes. The Little Mermaid willingly suffers through these trials only to be near her beloved. But the Prince, not realizing how lucky he is, becomes enamored with a beautiful but vain princess.

Russia, 1919. A young soldier of the First Cavalry Army, Aleksei Mikhalyov, is sent to work in the provincial Cheka. Here in the south of the country there is a large White Guard underground led by the elusive Markov. Aleksei gets into the gang, where he is mistaken for his own. The day of the operation to eliminate the white underground is appointed. But unforeseen circumstances destroy the plans of the Chekists.

A sequel to the well-known story about a Little Red Riding Hood (Krasnaya Shapochka). This time, a family of a slain wolf decides to avenge his death. So they falsely inform Little Red Riding Hood that her grandma is sick and prepare to eat her on her way.

The film-play tells about a teenage girl with a difficult fate, who by chance ended up in someone else's family, about difficult relationships with the people who sheltered her.