Polina Aug

On New Year Eve a girl with a scythe is going through winter Moscow. Who is she looking for?..

This is a collection of portraits: 23 short stories about the Mari women, a sort of Decameron suspended between magic and realism, in which the Autonomous Republic of the Marij El serves as a backdrop for the collective history of a people of ancient tradition. A journey into a mysterious and unknown part of the world.

Five friends – a poet, an actor, a painter, an architect and a primitivist film director – are five red avant-garde artists who try to find the embodiment of their hopes and dreams in the young Soviet state. The Revolution is boiling up like a bottle with apple cider: winged service dogs and heart-shaped potatoes, dead Semashko, the People’s Commissar for Health, and cheerful angels, love for the Tsar and love for the young secretary Annushka, executions and pregnancies – everything is interlaced and inseparable!

The Humorist is a film about a week in the life of Boris Arkadiev, a fictional Soviet stand-up comedian. Boris is tormented not only by external oppression and censorship but also by his own insecurities that poison all his relationships.

Orléans is a typical provincial Russian town on the banks of a salt lake called Yarovoye. The town is 'steeped in evil'. But it isn't some great evil. This evil is of a banal and everyday type: Lida the hairdresser has indiscriminate affairs, followed by numerous abortions; Rudik the doctor enjoys an endless supply of women, thanks to his position, neglecting his paralyzed father who lives with him and hoping the old man will die soon; the local officer of the law has no qualms about committing murder; a magician from the local circus might actually be sawing women in half on stage... One day, a mysterious man appears in this quiet backwater town. He goes by the title of the Executor: at least that's what it says on his business card...

A story about two Moscow young girls one of them is trying to become an architect and other is a beginner singer.

This time, in keeping with the best traditions of the first two parts, Mothers tells a beautiful, fascinating, lyrical and funny story of the three mothers that takes place in a small European town on New Year’s Eve. The three mothers are flying to Prague on New Year’s Eve.

Zhenya and Boris are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and recriminations. Already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, they are impatient to start again, to turn the page – even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha. Until, after witnessing one of their fights, Alyosha disappears.

A local female football team works together to get through hard times and overcome sexual prejudice. Their strength is tested when they lose not only the games, but also their beloved coach who was the core of their team. But they work together to seek financial support, achieve victories, and respect.

A film almanac consisting of three short stories, each of which tells about the fate of a woman, her hopes for love and the vicissitudes of fate. A village girl Mira dreams of a groom, and now an officer stays in their house for the night, and Mira soon discovers that she is pregnant... Valya, who returned from Venice, where she lived for two years, meets Alexei, her sister's lover – and she likes him. Vera, a retired ballerina, teaches yoga at a hotel and falls in love with a married man. And one day a Spanish theater comes to their city with a ballet ... each of the women will have to make difficult decisions in an attempt to find happiness.

Очень хочется жить

The comedy melodrama in mockumentary format. Maria is seriously ill preparing for death: chooses a coffin, buys a dress, orders a place in the cemetery. Despite his wife has already reconciled to the destiny, Peter is secretly looking for money to pay for expensive treatment abroad.

World War II. In autumn 1941 the German troops completely surrounded one of the biggest Russian cities — Leningrad. 2,5 million civilians got trapped in the city. The German commandment decided to destroy the city with bombings, artillery attacks and, most importantly, with hunger. The most difficult first winter of the siege (1941 — 1942). A young woman Olga is walking through the whole city to her father. She wants to see him one last time to say goodbye and to ask for his forgiveness.

Journalists from Moscow, Vika and Alexey, dissatisfied with life, tired of bosses and problems at work, come to the outback to report on the residents of an emergency house, where they face shocking fates of people.

The world famous pianist comes home, to the USSR, to participate in the Tchaikovsky Competition. But the commission does not allow him even to the final round. This event becomes fatal for the hero. The heroine of the second story, a young girl, becomes a widow some time after the wedding. Unable to let go of her husband, she asks him questions in her mind. The content of the long-awaited response is overwhelming.

The unknown actor Lesha works as animator and doesn’t see a chance of success. Lesha doesn’t understand how he is worse than a well-known actor of numerous sensational movies. In complete despair, he notices a girl on the roof of a house and rescues her from jumping, without suspecting that this will later present him with a chance of finding a way into big cinema.

A fight en route to an airport leads an ordinary Moscow couple to split on a whim. With Nikita ending up in Thailand and Zhenya in Berlin, both find themselves in two separate love triangles, inadvertently causing chaos in others' relationships as they attempt to fix theirs. But even continents apart, their lives turn out to be more intricately connected than they realize.

A young Finnish woman escapes an enigmatic love affair in Moscow by boarding a train to the arctic port of Murmansk. Forced to share the long ride and a tiny sleeping car with a larger than life Russian miner, the unexpected encounter leads the occupants of Compartment No. 6 to face major truths about human connection.

Moscow, 1930s. A prominent writer's works are suddenly censored by the Soviet state and the premiere of his theatrical play about Pontius Pilate is canceled. He's kicked out of the Soviet Writer's Union, and quickly turns into an outcast with no means to survive. Inspired by Margarita - his lover, he begins working on a new novel in which all the characters are satirically reinterpreted from his life. The novel's central character is Woland - a mystical dark force who visits Moscow to revenge all those who caused the writer's downfall. As the Master sinks himself deeper and deeper into his novel, adding himself and Margarita as characters, he gradually stops noticing as the border between reality and his imagination fades away.

A story of a young girl Claudia who works as a security guard on a slowly dying metal plant.

Inspired by the words of a random beauty, Slava quits his job as a freight forwarder and his wife Masha, who does not understand him, for the sake of a dream of becoming a professional psychic. The scope of his abilities is dowsing. And now he scans passers-by in the passages, selflessly looking for the sources of water in the gardens and lives with the guard in the booth.

An ordinary day for the wealthy Garber family ends with a stunning event: their daughter Lena appears in their gallery, disappearing without a trace ten years ago. She does not remember where she was all these years and how she managed to return. Already lost hope, Katerina Garber immediately recognizes her daughter, while her husband is in no hurry to believe in a miracle. The return of Lena does not bring happiness to the family, but, on the contrary, makes her life unbearable, throwing the Garbers away in those moments of the past that they would rather not remember.

Клипот

In the One Call bar, anyone can call a deceased loved one by agreeing to a deadly game of Russian roulette. Investigator Andrey Morozov is looking for his missing son, and all the evidence leads to a mysterious bar that appears in different places, leaving behind the bodies of dead visitors.

The plot centers on a couple of Zhenya and Nikita, whose lives are radically changing due to an ordinary quarrel at the airport. Lovers find themselves on different sides of the world. Zhenya gets on the set in Berlin, meets a brilliant director and becomes a co-author of his film. And Nikita goes to Thailand, where his life is also turned upside down. But one thing remains unchanged for the guy: the desire to be close to Zhenya, which can overcome all geographical, physical and even moral boundaries.