The Last Year

This is a story about commitment and dedication to one's talent which resonates with the difficult topic of the mother's love deficit that is relevant for many.

30-year-old Muscovite Aiko’s father, with whom she had not communicated for many years, died - he was a tyrant, and she does not feel sorry for him. But for some reason she goes to Kazakhstan for the funeral, where she sees her father’s second family for the first time: the sister is unbearable, the brother is out of this world, the stepmother is the same age as Aiko herself. And the strangest thing is that for them dad was completely different.

Christmas night. Married couple. All the guests have left and it’s time to dig into the marriage relationships – do husband and wife still love each other or not? If they have ever loved at all… Are they telling the truth or are they lying? Can they forgive and forget? Should they stay together or get divorced?

After losing her parents, Masha falls in love with her guardian Sergei Mikhailovich. Masha is young, Sergei Mikhailovich is much older, and they have to go through a difficult path to understanding each other.

True Kazakh girls don’t marry Russians. This is what grandma Zeinegul believes in. But her beloved granddaughter disobeyed her will. Many years later the girl comes back to Kazakhstan. Her mother drinks, her grandma prays, her father got married again, but she wants to take a picture of her whole family, just like the one they took years ago when she was a child. The picture of the family she loves and hates so much.

These women were to be born and live in Moscow. They are the children of Muscovites who were repressed in the 30s and 40s of the last century. There are not many of them, only about 1,500 left for the whole country. All their lives, the “children of the GULAG” have been living in exile, although their parents have been officially rehabilitated, and the law guarantees them the right to return to their former place of residence. In 2019, they won the case in the Constitutional Court, but the State Duma is in no hurry to amend the legislation, and the government proposes to stand in the general queue for housing and wait another 30 years. Meanwhile, every month the number of children in the Gulag is decreasing.

The footage shot in sunny Abkhazia will show the life of a village where juicy fruit is grown, the harvest process, difficult logistics and, of course, people who deliver the aroma of the New Year and southern warmth to snow-covered houses from year to year.