Leningraders

A documentary road movie. Traveling across his homeland, the filmmaker explores what Yakut cinema is, and what it means to the Sakha people and to himself.

Nikita Yefimov brings his camera into a Russian high-security detention centre. The head of the penitentiary department offers to personally enact moments from prison life to control its image.

Viktor Ryzhakov takes charge of the Sovremennik theatre after the death of Galina Volchek, who led the troupe for almost half a century and enjoyed absolute authority. For the theatre’s first new production, the new artistic director chooses a play about a family whose members have ceased to understand each other. While working on the play, the director and actors become more and more like the characters in the future production, and find it increasingly difficult to find mutual understanding within their “theatrical family.”

Novorzhev is a small town in the Pskov region. After six in the evening, its streets are empty, and it seems that life in this place has stopped. But she is in full swing at the House of Culture, where local residents rehearse the play based on a play by a Spanish playwright. The heroes poison each other, try to shoot their relatives, die writhing in convulsions - and at some point it is no longer clear where life is and where is the theater.