Ballot Boxes

Аlina Makarova is a mother of six of her own children and one adopted child. Her ex husband is from Ethiopia, and all her own children are mixed race. Only her adopted son is white, but he has serious health problems and is psychologically unstable. Alina's older children realise what complications the adoption might bring and are afraid that there won't be enough room, time and love for everyone. But she convinces them that it's the right thing.

The documentary project The Term was conceived in May 2012. When the directing trio commenced mapping the Russian sociopolitical landscape, Vladimir Putin had just settled into the Kremlin for his third term. The original experimental format of “documentary bulletins,” which were published daily online, allowed for wide-ranging content; in the feature film version, however, the filmmakers focused solely on the members of various opposition groups. Nevertheless, the work’s neutral position remains and viewers have to interpret the objectively presented situations for themselves. The main characteristics of this strongly authentic movie include close contact with the protagonists, precise editing, and an effectively controlled release of information.

Ten director graduates from Marina Razbezhkina’s School of Documentary Film and Documentary Theatre lived with a camera for two months in order to chronicle the last “Russian winter” and its popular uprising against Vladimir Putin’s presidential run. People, faces, conversations, protests, failures and triumphs come together to chronicle the campaign.

An intimate portrait of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov — once Deputy Prime Minister and “an heir of President Yeltsin”, later an uncompromising adversary of Putin — that was assassinated near the Kremlin in February 2015. Election campaigns and hotel beds, protest rallies and office routine, train compartments and courtrooms, night walks and police vans – you have never seen any politician so close. This is a story how a journalist assignment turns into a genuine friendship.

What happens when the boundaries between the observer and the subject are obliterated? When love appears not as a polished image, but in the guise of a homeless, drunk, and wounded person whom the world has turned its back on? This is a story about love that refuses to acknowledge the "social gutter". It is about equality that cannot be imposed, but can be experienced. In this film, reality rewrites the script. What was intended as a documentary about volunteers helping the homeless suddenly transforms into a chronicle of an impossible love affair. The film producer falls in love with the protagonist – a homeless man named Edik. The camera captures not only the social drama but an inner revolution which comes at a price. The struggle with addiction, rejection, the lure of the streets, and the fear of being authentic. Yet, against all odds, in this struggle we discern a radical act of recognizing humanity in someone who is usually overlooked.

The main character of the film, Alexander Strizhenova, became famous in talk shows and tabloid media as the daughter of a Soviet actress, Natalya Strizhenova, who grew up without a father - but this is not mentioned in the film by Rastorguev. Sasha, beaten by life, when we meet her, lives in a cluttered and untidy village house somewhere in the Moscow Region with her husband, with whom they swear dirtyly in the presence of their young son Ilya. Sasha smokes, drinks and endlessly suffers from a lack of love and from the fact that no one can understand it. Three years later, the viewer again sees her life - in another place, with another man and with a new child, but in about the same circumstances.

A modern-day shaman sets out across Siberia to Moscow on a God-given mission to exorcise the demon in the Kremlin - Vladimir Putin. On his 8000km journey he is gradually joined by others. How will the Russian authorities react? A Shaman’s Tale is a road movie about political repression in modern Russia.