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.

Pavel “Pasha” Talankin is an unlikely hero—a beloved Russian primary school teacher, known as a mentor and prankster who offers students a safe haven in his office. As Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Pasha’s role in the school changes dramatically as he is reluctantly drawn into Putin’s propaganda machine. Forced to promote state-sanctioned messages and horrified by the transformation of his school and community, he struggles with guilt and a sense of powerlessness, leading him to become an international whistleblower. As the school’s videographer, Pasha documents intimate and revealing footage of Putin’s regime, capturing the rise of militarized children’s groups, repressive laws, fervent nationalism, and the recruitment of graduating students to fight in the war. When he learns his own life may be at risk, Pasha is forced to plan a dangerous escape from Russia. Directed by David Borenstein and co-directed by Pavel Talankin, this uniquely collaborative film is as captivating and joyful as it is eye-opening and sobering. Mr. Nobody Against Putin showcases rare footage that reveals the profound impact of Putin’s regime on the lives of everyday Russians, particularly its children.

After her parents’ divorce, six-year-old Vladlena moves from Crimea to Grozny, not yet aware of the changes that lie ahead. When war breaks out in Chechnya, it deeply affects her city and family. Years later, filmmaker Vladlena Sandu reflects on her childhood in this poetic, autobiographical hybrid film, exploring how cycles of violence shape children—and how healing and change are possible.

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.

Approximately 400 Ukrainian women are currently held captive in Russia, including civilians detained in occupied territories. The fate of many of them has remained unknown since 2014. Civilian Ukrainian prisoners are often accused of extremism and espionage. After their arrest, women are subjected to rape, humiliation, torture, and are forced to dig trenches for the Russian army.

The heroines of Ekaterina Fomina's film are Ukrainian women who managed to escape captivity, as well as the daughter of an elderly woman who has been imprisoned for seven years.

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.

On the Pacific coast of Mexico, in the land Ina Marija had chosen as her home before she died too soon, her father and her younger sister Una embark on a journey retracing her steps. There, amidst the extraordinary and resilient nature of the mangroves — in a Laguna battered by hurricanes yet perpetually reborn — they begin to navigate the tender terrain of grief. Sharunas Bartas, directing the film, lays his emotions bare in an act of transmission, allowing for a reconstruction anchored in the natural cycles of life.

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.

"Trains" is a “found-footage” documentary consisting of solely film archival materials, which creates a collective portrait of people in 20th century Europe, capturing their hopes, desires, dramas, and tragedies.

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.