It Began This Way...

Documentary about the Cold War.

Fitil is a popular Soviet/Russian television satirical/comedy short film series which ran for about 500 episodes. Some of the episodes were aimed at children, and were called Фитилёк, Fitilyok, Little Fuse. Each issue contained from the few short segments: documentary, fictional and animated ones. Directed by various artists, including Leonid Gaidai who presented his famous trio of Nikulin, Vitsin and Morgunov into the cast. It was called in USSR as "the anecdotes from the Soviet government".

A film from which you can learn about the first progress of the USSR in space exploration, as well as about the achievements of Yuri Gagarin, the world famous first cosmonaut, who was the very first to conquer the depths of space. This is an educational documentary film for people of all ages. And for those who are nostalgic about the past, and for those who want to learn more about space and its conquest.

The tragic story of a Russian family forced to make life and death decisions during the Stalinist purges.

The story of a man who routinely dodges all responsibility, bemoans fate, spends his days boozing, and refuses to work. The act of playing long-lost father to a pretty teenager spurs him to turn over a new leaf.

1935. Two families — Davydov's with three children and the newlyweds Lida and Dmitri Kashirin's — enter the new house on the outskirts of Moscow into a common communal apartment. The children grow up, and they and the adults around them are looking for their place in life, looking for answers to the questions of who to be and what to be, quarreling, making peace, building relationships, destroying them. Six years later, the peaceful lives of characters, with their joys and misfortunes, quarrels and reconciliations, and complex personal relationships, are blown up by a war that connects everyone at once, forcing them to see the meaning of their days, their attitudes to each other and their life values in a different way. For some of them, war is a fatal trait.

A young boy from Prague is trying to find a Soviet soldier from the old 1945 picture.

A story about the fate of several generations of an old Moscow family. The life of these people, full of drama, fatally intersects with the historical fate of Russia. The plot focuses on the love of a young officer and a girl against the background of Stalinist socialism.

Former student Raskolnikov is pushed to murder when struggling to pay the rent on his apartment. When the murder is being investigated by the police, Raskolnikov struggles between trying to hide his guilt and the pressure to confess.

The adopted daughter of Dr. Skvortsov, Tanya, having learned that her mother is alive, who was considered dead during the bombing of World War II, decides to go to her in a distant village on vacation.

As a student at the University of Berlin, Karl Marx joins the "Doctoral Club," a refuge for young free thinkers. Karl Marx decides to devote himself to philosophy, defends his thesis, becomes a Doctor of Philosophy, but hopes to teach at the University of Bonn. When this plan falls through, Marx accepts an offer to work as editor of a Rhine newspaper...

In the summer of 1917, Vladimir Lenin leaves Petrograd and shelters in Razliv with fellow revolutionary Grigory Zinoviev. In the weeks that follow, Lenin writes his famous "Blue Notebook" advocating proletarian revolution.

The story of VGIK teachers and students about the acting profession.