This film is an attempt to convey the message left by the artist, whose work changed dramatically at the most difficult moment of his life.

The most famous painting by Ilya Repin from school textbooks “Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan on November 16, 1581” (another name is “Ivan the Terrible kills his son”) was banned by Emperor Alexander III in 1885, and thus became the first painting censored in the Russian Empire. After 130 years, already in modern Russia, a group of historians and activists turned to the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation with a request to remove the painting from the Tretyakov Gallery. Is there a causal relationship between past and present?

The author dedicated this drama to his countrymen, builders and metallurgists of the famous Magnitka. The giant plant saved the country during the Great Patriotic War, strengthened its power in peacetime. No one spoke or thought about the price. Through the prism of his own childhood impressions, the author shows the history of his native city, talking about the inhuman conditions of life for several generations, about how a fairy tale became a reality in the “city of dreams”.

Cinematographers of the silent film period were the first to figure out how to shoot a moving image. In the early years of cinema, the reputation of such people, both inside the industry and outside it, was curious, paradoxical. On the one hand, as masters of the mysterious mechanisms of cinema, they enjoyed a reputation as wizards. But more often they were perceived as adventurers. However, the first generation of Russian cameramen made many artistic discoveries.

Nearly two hundred years ago, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, and Varna were founded at the foot of the Ural Mountains. The Nagaybak Cossacks introduced the tradition of naming their native places in honor of distant victories. The tradition has given amazing results, and now in the depths of Russia, in the Urals, there is a kind of "ghost of Europe". How do Parisians and Berliners live far from world capitals?

The series is based on the memories of children, participants and witnesses of various events in Russia in the 20th century. How children who grew up in Russia in different years of the 20th century perceived the world around them, and with it the everyday life of Russian history. Life, the behavior of parents, the behavior of friends and enemies of the family, the external environment, social upheavals, political events, all this is noticed by children, all this adds up to that picture of history that we will not find either in official reports or in historical research.