Sergey Karaban

All day long the TV shows an ice-hole. Ice-holes are the theme of the day, a winter tradition that unites believers and sportsmen, stars and walruses, the president and the unemployed. In the centre of the news reports are the topics of Baptism, fishing and the criminal chronicle. The president and a pike, the artist and the crit- ics, the oligarch and the law enforcement team – they all meet at an ice- hole in search of solutions for their problems. The jobless Muscovite, with bad habits, dives down an ice-hole for a wife, just like Sadko. The fairy- tale plots intertwine with documentary context, and it is no longer clear where reality ends. Remember Nietzsche: if you long gaze into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you.

Универ. 10 лет спустя

Egor Melenin, known to his friends as Mel, lives in a small seaside town and is graduating from high school this spring. Mel cannot stand the routine and the tedium of his life much longer, and with his loyal friends Kisa and Hank, they start to look for excitement in their small seaside town that offers little to nothing for them. This all changes when a famous film director comes to town to shoot a commercial. Things take a turn when the director seduces Angela, an underage girl who Mel is in love with. Enraged, Mel challenges the director to a duel with a pair of antique pistols he and his friends had recently found. In this duel the Director is killed, but rather than revulsion, the group of teenagers find the thrill of the duel and the risk of death to be the antidote to their mundane lives. And so, ‘The Black Spring’ dueling club is formed – and with it the series asks, what will these teenagers be prepared to look down the barrel of a gun for?