Oskar Lind

Intensely and for a long time Valery was looking for an occasion for achievement. Seventeen years of boring life have formed a scornful gait among the young man in protest towards an eventless world. But ordinary everyday difficulties came, followed by the responsibility for making decisions. And it turned out that everyday life is not just past days. This is real life.

The good-natured scholar Christian-Theodore arrives in a small country where miracles occur. He falls in love with the beautiful Princess, whose marriage is a matter of national importance, because her husband will become the new king. But unlike many “suitors”, selfish thoughts are alien to Christian-Theodore. He is sincerely fascinated by her beauty and releases his Shadow, hoping to get a faithful helper in his quest to marry the Princess. But the Shadow is the embodiment of egoism, greed and meanness. Quickly betraying the scholar, he marries the Princess himself and takes the royal throne.

Police captain Aleshin is investigating a case related to the theft of opium at a chemical factory warehouse. Everything suggests that the offender must be sought among the employees of the enterprise. One of the workers, Frolov, is familiar to Alyoshin in another matter. And although Aleshin is confident in Frolov’s honesty, he suspects something was wrong, seeing how he hides something from him and himself suffers from it. At the dacha, the factory director Vasiltsev killed his stepfather, who turned out to be an unnecessary witness. A trace brings Aleshin to a plant employee, a certain Olga ...

In January 1945 during WWII, German corporal Kaspar and a Russian fugitive become partners in survival.

Russian monk Grigori Rasputin rises to power, which corrupts him along the way. His sexual perversions and madness ultimatly leads to his gruesome assasination.

This lavish Soviet/Czech co-production is based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's famous novel, The Gambler, which tells the story of a Russian living in Germany, in a gambling resort. This film is set at the turn of the century, and was filmed in Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad), Czechoslovakia. Played by Nikolai Burlyayev, the gambler succumbs completely to his addiction, using up every resource he has (human, spiritual and financial) in his wagering, finally becoming a rootless drifter.