Sergei Koltakov died quite recently. He was a powerful actor, about the scale which is evidenced by any of his film characters, starting with "Mirror for a Hero" and ending at least Fyodor Karamazov, at least any of his last roles. But outside the screen and the stage, Sergei avoided publicity, did not open up, did not act in film, did not give interviews. The only exception is these exclusive reflections on fate, on the meaning of life and creativity, in an informal setting on set and at home, which formed the basis of this film.

Love and death. The war of 1992-1993, which in Abkhazia is called the Patriotic War, has long ended, but the small sovereign unrecognized state is not able to overcome the war syndrome. I so want love! In the mountain village of Achandara, Lavrik Akhba, an actor of the Abkhaz Drama Theater, a captain of the second rank of the border fleet and a farmer, is trying to help his friend Tuta find a bride through a dating site. But suddenly he himself, a war hero, a lover of books and women, is overwhelmed by a love of such strength that it turns out to be more destructive than that terrible past war.

The ingenious Kira Muratova looks at a person with irony, as if from afar and from above, like at a funny puppet theater, but her eyes are full of sympathy. She divides artists into two categories, preachers and players. He ranks himself, of course, among the latter. Randomness is her muse. Improvisation is a feature of the method. And what is life if not improvisation?

Who is Sergey Muratov, many people know. One of the three legendary inventors of KVN, professor of Moscow State University, adored by students. Learned many stars of domestic television journalism. The largest theorist and authority, he wrote a mountain of books about television. But few people know that in fact Professor Muratov is an ordinary alien who visited Earth in transit.

Father Sergei Bulgakov and sister Joanna (Julia Reitlinger). High monastic love. The inability to live without each other, despite the sidelong glances of others, the suffering of loved ones and self-condemnation. A stranger among his own, his own among strangers, but in essence nowhere at home. The constant dialogue of the brightest thinker in the circle of brilliant minds of the Russian diaspora in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century and his spiritual daughter, the baroness, the original artist, this is their work together, the transposition of Bulgakov's speculation about Sophia the Wisdom of God into icons and frescoes by Yulia Nikolaevna in churches and monasteries in France, England, Czech Republic.

On the issue of faith, Grigory Pomerants advocated a dialogue between East and West, against the pride of religion.

Grigory Pomerants went through the entire war from 1941 to 1945, was in the hottest battles, reached Berlin. His observations and reflections on the essence of war and man in war are amazing. So no one has yet comprehended the Great Patriotic War.

In 1965, Grigory Pomerants read the famous anti-Stalinist report "On the Moral Role of the Personality" at the Institute of Philosophy. In the 60-70s, the time of recognition of Grigory Solomonovich and a long time of persecution began at the same time.

"Happiness is not a wallet on the road. It opens from within, and in order for it to open, all the past, all the failures in which the soul came true," Grigory Pomerants wrote. This film is about him. About his path through the influx of love, through an explosion of passion and the tragedy of the death of a loved one to a great love that cancels death itself.

The sin of murder that cannot be washed away, the mark of Cain, a personal catastrophe. This happened to Vyacheslav Sharayevski 25 years before, when he was a district prosecutor. The death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when a moratorium was placed on capital punishment, but some thirty men sat together in a single room for six months, expecting to die on the 3rd, 13th, and 23rd. A change happened then, like being born anew. This man who was once an atheist, rationalist, and skeptic now became like a babe, a child of God. He owes his new life to an amazing priest, Alexander Borisov. Between the saint and the sinner is an eternal link. How they need one another.

The legendary personality, artist, philosopher, sportsman and teacher Gusein Magomayev and his Russian wife Olga 20 years ago in the foothills of Buynaksk built with their own hands the now world-famous school “Five Sides of the World”, a miracle, a challenge to terrorism and a spiritual alternative.

A paradoxical personality, former police captain Magomed Shamilov is a hero, sage and devout Muslim. 16 years ago, he created the Independent Trade Union of Police and Prosecutors of Dagestan to fight clannishness, terrorism, and corruption in the “hottest” region of Russia, and he himself is surprised that he is still alive. Don Quixote is immortal.

It has become commonplace that fools and roads are Russia's main disaster. Clever, but petty. We must finally look at the root. The first age-old trouble is power. The second, equal in size, is the people.

What happened to Lina Mkrtchyan, a unique singer who in the 1990s was the first in post-Soviet Russia to sing in the Vatican and to sell out in the best concert halls in the world? Sokurov said about her that he could not live with such a huge gift. So she failed, taking a kind of vow of public singing silence.

The village of Korkino near Chelyabinsk is full of wonders. The most impudent falsifications in the December elections to the State Duma were also recorded here. Here is the deepest coal mine on the continent. In February, there was a phenomenon here, in one day Putin resolved what the inhabitants had been fighting for fifteen years, with a wave of his hand he resettled several houses that were sliding into a pit. The investigation of Leonid Nikitinsky shows the whole absurdity of Russian democratic elections under serfdom.

10 years ago, the mother of many children, Lena, in a sacrificial impulse, divorced Yura and married a murderer sentenced to life imprisonment. Then a film was even made about this amazing act of the “incomprehensible Russian soul”. Now Lena and Yura are together again after painful trials. And these rural aristocrats of the spirit amaze with the depth of introspection, subtlety of feelings, humor and sadness about the impossible.

Grigory Pomerants and Zinaida Mirkina are wise men. The topics of their reflections are the need for loneliness, the fate of civilization, the meaning of suffering, and whether a clear conscience is possible.

The genre of the film is a patriotic satire forgotten since the time of Saltykov-Shchedrin. As you know, a lot has changed in Russia over the past 20 years, but nothing has changed over the past 300 years. Features of the Russian mentality in the portrait of today's Ivan Susanin, who leads a tour of the Kostroma forests in summer and works as a huntsman in winter.

Wise men of different faiths called the same bird by different names, says Grigory Pomerants, a unique thinker of our era. This bird flew to him at the time of the death of his beloved woman.