When Danish filmmaker Lea Glob first portrayed Apolonia Sokol in 2009, she appeared to be leading a storybook life. The talented Apolonia was born in an underground theater in Paris and grew up in an artists’ community leading the ultimate bohemian existence. In her twenties, she studied at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, one of the most prestigious art academies in Europe. Over the years, Lea Glob kept returning to film the charismatic Apolonia, and a special bond developed between the two young women. The result is a fascinating portrait, spanning 13 years, of a young woman trying to find her place in the art world.

Siege of Leningrad during World War II. Filmed by cameramen-heroes. Without words, without music, only sounds and pictures of a dying city. Or a city trying to survive.

The history of a family. The history of the country. Ukraine 2014–2015. Director of the movie, Vitaly Mansky, was born in Ukraine, and, after finishing his studies in VGIK, he lived and worked in Moscow. His family still lives in Ukraine, and because of the Russian-Ukrainian military conflict, his family members had to make a choice, which resulted in some of them becoming sworn enemies. This film reveals different aspects of the conflict, focusing on the situations faced by an “ordinary” person, as well as examining different views of the world, so that the spectator can look deeper into the roots of these tragic events. At the same time, the interviews made by the director – conversations with relatives –reveal the feelings and views of these people but also provide an insight into the history of Ukraine and preconditions of this conflict. The film shows how the conflict caused hatred among the citizens of the same country. Close Relations is the most personal movie made by Vitaly Mansky.

A film about modern Europe. About its two edges, or, more correctly, extremes. About Europe, which begins in the deserted space of Russian Siberia and ends on the cozy beaches of the Bay of Biscay, where even the laws of nature form fundamentally different styles of human existence. What can unite such different lives? Physically, they are united by the Western Siberia–Western Europe gas pipeline. The pipe not only connected, but also inextricably linked THIS Russia with THIS Europe. The film was awarded the National Film Award "Nika" - 2014, nomination Best Non-Fiction Film.

Everyday life of a mobile blood transfusion station in Russia.

According to a drunk, middle-aged woman who always wanted to be an actress, "Happiness is when someone understands you, when someone loves you." Her equally inebriated boyfriend is so jealous that he smacks her time and again. Director Alexander Rastorguev follows the tragicomic couple during their summer holiday by the sea. But he also directs his camera at other seaside visitors, like the man earning a living on the beach with a camel, a young womaniser, and a dwarf getting married to a young woman. They are all spending the summer on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. Rastorguev observes man in all of his manifestations: fat, thin, young, old, drunk, dancing, singing, having sex and bathing in mud or in the sea. Even President Putin makes an appearance, clad in casual clothes. Quite a few fortune-seekers at the resort get caught up in a daily carrousel of sex, booze and aggression. When a corpse washes ashore, several people say they would also like to drown in the sea. It is no surprise that the soundtrack repeatedly plays a song of longing, about a small boat all alone at sea: "What is it looking for so far from home? Not happiness, but a typhoon."

Not far from Grozny, an old steam locomotive with several wagons attached to it stands on a siding. The locomotive provides steam, hot water in the boilers, and a bathhouse is equipped in the cars, where soldiers and officers wash and wash their linen. A washing station on wheels is both a soldier's bivouac, and a piece of peaceful life, and the beginning of a new road.

Black dust, shrill metallic noises, dark tunnels, muscular bodies – all that is the past. At the end of 2018, extraction of coal throughout Germany came to an end. That same year, the voices of the emerging climate protest movement ‘Fridays for Future’ grew louder. Against the backdrop of these media and socio-political events, the film follows five miners on their tragic, humorous and heartwarming search for a new role in life.

In this large family, everyone yearns for sex, both teenagers and adults. Inna is about 50, she is a well-known midwife and specialist in gentle births. Despite all the achievements, Inna feels unhappy, she recently divorced. After a difficult divorce, four children support their mother until one day a mysterious lover appears who invites her on a journey.

Minsk, Belarus, August 9, 2020, presidential election day. The day of the start of the most massive protests in the history of the country. There are two people in the square. They could have been good neighbors or acquaintances, but they found themselves opposite each other, in the role of victim and aggressor. It seemed like they couldn't do anything. But both proved that this is not so. That there is a path between desperate feat and inhuman indifference.

Shot on 16mm, Transnistra follows a group of young people as they move from a carefree summer through an unforgiving winter in the self-proclaimed state of Transnistria. At the forefront is Tanya, a headstrong young woman who spends her time with young men who all seem to be in love with her.

Sur l’île désertique d’Ostrov, en mer Caspienne, une poignée d’habitants, délaissée de l’État russe depuis la chute de l’Union soviétique, vit sans route, ni électricité, ni emploi. Emprisonné à plusieurs reprises pour braconnage, Ivan n’a pas le choix. Pour nourrir sa famille, il continue de pratiquer la pêche illégale. Par amour pour Ivan, Anna a quitté la ville pour les conditions de vie déplorables d’Ostrov. Tous les deux rêvent à un avenir radieux pour leur fils, qui, lui, est bien décidé à prendre la mer.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fish processing collective was destroyed. There is no electricity on the island, no work, no doctors, no police. Ivan has only one job opportunity - illegal fishing. He has no choice - he will either catch sturgeon or starve. Sometimes Ivan turns on the generator and proudly watches public television programmes about Russia's sunny future. Anna lived in the city, but fell in love with Ivan and chose the harsh life on the island. Anna and Ivan want their children to have a better life elsewhere, but their son has already started going to sea.

The film is available only on the territory of the Russian Federation.

The film reveals the mechanism that entices human beings to voluntarily turn themselves into submissive, faceless creatures. Thus, they become a resource to be used by the state – a grey lump of ore oblivious to the innate value of their individual life. The town of Apatity first came into being as a concentration camp. Today, 50 years is considered a ripe old age in the industrial town of Apatity, while the environment is at the brink of an ecological disaster. The adults while away their lives at the factory bus stop whilst the children – the token of their immortality – miss out on family life and warmth. Instead, they are left in the care of state structures that inculcate in them the traits of prisoners, making use of celebration-like dancing and marching trainings. Neither the children nor their educators are aware of this. They are convinced that they are bringing up a generation of patriotic heroes, fated to become legionnaires of the Earth and the adjacent cosmic expanses. The only way out of this system is death. However, if you die for the state you become an immortal hero. The dancing and marching fall into the conveyor-belt rhythm of the moving trains, full of grey lumps of ore that are also destined for immortality: they will become phosphorus fertiliser on which new life will grow. Film website: https://immortal.ee

There are two weeks before the meeting with the mother. There is a month before death. But the first seems much scarier. "Outro" in music means the completion of a piece, an exit, a sign of the end.

The acclaimed documentary ALMOST HOLY tells the story of Gennadiy Mohknenko, a Ukrainian pastor who has taken up the fight against child homelessness by forcibly abducting street kids and bringing them to his private rehabilitation center. Gennadiy's ongoing efforts and unabashedly tough love approach to his city's problems has made him a folk hero to some, and a lawless vigilante to others. Using gripping footage that follows the self-appointed savior's mission over the course of fifteen years, interspersing imagery from a popular Soviet animated TV show; ALMOST HOLY is a bold and captivating portrait of a man fighting to change Ukraine for the better, as its place in a tense political landscape hangs in the balance.

Twelve years ago Anya and Zhenya had a daughter, Nadya. They were very young, and their life soon became a problem. Zhenya ended up in jail, and Anya and Nadya ended up living with Zhenyas family. During the twelve years that have passed, Anya has done quite a lot of changes in her own and Nadya’s life, some of them involving Zhenya. The first time Zhenya went to jail – for beating Anya – he didn’t have to stay that long. But the second time he was sentenced to four years, for rape. During most of the twelve years Anya has worked with Zhenyas mother in their shoemaker’s workshop. Zhenyas father, a retired policeman, has come and gone in the shop, taken care of his granddaughter, but also had a relationship with Anya. When Sasha, Zhenya’s father, beats Anya and ends up in prison, Anya finally leaves Zhenyas family. She has divorced Zhenya and has found a new man, with whom she and Nadya lives. "Once There Was Love"is the final piece in the multi-award winning trilogy chronicling a tale of a one-time middle class Russian family whose life is slowly coming apart at the edges. Covering the 12 years since the birth of baby Nadya, this film builds upon the previous films, including the Prix Italia-winner "I Love you Natasja", and offers a dramatic story from small town Russia.

What is it like to be HIV positive in Russia? The authors of the film spent several days with HIV-infected heroes Alexandra and Oles and made a film about how they live. This is a kind of chronicle. The heroes in the frame live their lives. Minutes of sadness, moments of joy. They live the way they can and how they really live.

A documentary about the life of an eight-year-old schoolgirl Gin-mi in Pyongyang, the capital of the DPRK, shot by a Russian filmmaker in a script written by North Korean comrades.

This film is about the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON), one of the many Gulag zones scattered around the country. Used documents and film materials of the 1920-30s. The film features former prisoners of Soviet camps: Dmitry Likhachev, Efim Lagutin, Oleg Volkov, Zoya Marchenko, Olga Adamova-Sliozberg, Anatoly Gorelov and others.

Two people who came to work in Moscow met on a gravel pass. Sanya and Sparrow. One thirty-seven, the other nineteen. The problems started when they stopped paying salaries. Two lost souls lost at the bottom of life and an unexpected happy ending.