The story of a legendary man, a soldier of fortune, a "mad" hero Konstantin Masalev. Born warrior. About a fighter of the most formidable and merciless unit of the First Chechen War known as the "Mad Company". This is a film about a deadly drug called war, about life after the war and post-traumatic stress disorder. About love for Russia. And the strange, sometimes cruel "love" of Russia for its soldiers.

Traveling to a totalitarian, authoritarian — or simply unfree — country is easy today. The real question is what such a journey allows one to see, and more importantly, to truly notice. Most travelers return with conventional impressions: restaurants, cafés, exhibitions, theaters. Yet distance often sharpens perception. With this in mind, the filmmakers travel to Nazi Berlin of 1936, seeking to understand what impressions and observations they might have brought back from this dazzling, remarkable, and deeply unsettling city.

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.

What do we know about monsters? In the old days, people with congenital physical defects, or deformities, were called so. But today the word is rarely used in this sense. Nowadays, the monster is usually a fictional character. The protagonist of a movie or book. Absolute evil and the embodiment of our deepest fears. The personification of horror. But the question is, are they born or made like that?

This film is a collage of reality. Its soundscape is woven from events recorded on smartphones and posted publicly over the past two years. The visuals form a street chronicle of St. Petersburg during the same period. Through the editing of these spaces emerges a portrait of a country where history intertwines with everyday life, and individual voices merge into a collective chorus.

In the seventh episode of Silent Rock ’n’ Roll, Mikhail Kozyrev traces the reverse evolution of Russian chanson — from the songs of Galich, Okudzhava, and Vysotsky to contemporary performers such as Grigory Leps, Stas Mikhailov, and Vika Tsyganova. He examines the widespread support for the war among chanson artists and explores the reasons behind the enduring popularity of the criminal-themed genre in Russia.

A young atheist from St. Petersburg does not let his girlfriend go to the mosque on the Night of Predestination, when Muslims make wishes. Though it seems both of them don't want their wish to come true.

Dyed hair, earrings in the ears, bright clothes - an image that is very different from the Kazakh standard of masculinity. This is how the main characters of this look, members of the Kazakh group Ninety One. Many will not find anything unusual in the image of the musicians, however, the group's popularity among Kazakh-speaking teenagers caused great indignation in part of the society, which led to street protests, disruption of concerts and pressure from the authorities. The emergence of Ninety One revealed a whole layer of social and cultural conflicts within the Kazakh society between urban and rural culture, between traditionalism and globalization, between the vertical of power and personal freedom.

What do we know about clinical drug trials in humans? Strange things sometimes happen behind the doors of medical institutions, which are customary to remain silent. The film is about several volunteers who decide to trade their health for money without thinking about the consequences.

A film about two times refugees and their ability to maintain creativity in a time of political terror, repressed culture and fatal bombings. The experience of Belarusian creators who went through two catastrophic transformations in a short period of time. Their lives have been destroyed twice in two years, but they have the strength and energy to carry on. Create and inspire others. They establish Belarus outside the geographical borders of Belarus.

A film about systemic violence and the silence it leaves behind. It reflects on the legacy of state intrusion into private lives and the cost of impunity — not only for the victims, but also for the perpetrators, who remain free yet internally hollow. This is a story of fear, memory, and resistance — a testimony of those whose voices were never meant to be heard.

Sashka, Nastya and Lekha will spend their entire childhood in the boarding school. The boarding school is more like a children's prison, although the adults who work there are convinced that they make children happy.

"Dagestan" in translation into Russian means "country of mountains". And almost every mountain has its own people, with their own language and traditions. There are at least 30 of these peoples. But they are similar and united in the Republic. Today, Dagestan is a hot spot, where every day someone is killed and something is blown up. It is believed that this is done by fundamentalist Islamists. The film crew visited four mountain villages in order to understand how these people live and what relation they have to the Wahhabis.

Russia is a huge country full of contrasts and contradictions. Big cities, endless forests, steppes, swamps and snowy fields stun, intrigue and enchant. In this film, viewers will see Russia through the lenses of modern Russian photographers Igor Mukhin, Elena Anosova, Danila Tkachenko, Alexander Gronsky, Valery Nistratov and many others who worked in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Urals and the Far East, the Far North and Chechnya.

Former fighter of the Belarusian "death squad" Yuri Garavsky tells how he participated in the abduction and murder of Lukashenko's opponents 20 years ago. Then ex-Interior Minister Yuri Zakharenko, ex-head of the Central Election Commission Viktor Gonchar and businessman Anatoly Krasovsky, who supported the opposition, disappeared in Belarus. Garavsky claims that they were kidnapped and killed by the soldiers of the special rapid reaction unit of the internal troops of the Belarusian Interior Ministry. Among them was Garavsky himself.

This film tells the stories of several people connected by the tragedy in Bucha, which took place during the Russian occupation near Kyiv in 2022. We find them at the point where the first "dust" of the drama unfolding before the eyes of the world has already settled. But is the terrible thing in their lives really over?

Timofey Anufriev, the 21-year-old son of renowned artist Sergey Anufriev, was killed in Ukraine. He fought as part of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK). In February 2025, a film crew from "The Insider" met Timofey in Kyiv, where he spoke about why he made this decision, about war, and about death.

Study on the theme of the outgoing. The film is about the habit of peering into simple things, about the habit of noticing what you cannot call noticeable. An attempt to look at modern Moscow through the eyes of a man of the past, the twentieth century.

The tragedy of the theater center "Nord-Ost" in Moscow on Dubrovka, captured by terrorists in 2002, told by former hostages, special forces and negotiators. What do we still don’t know about these terrible events? Even 17 years later.

Events, people, phenomena that determined the way of life. That, without which it is impossible to imagine us, is even more difficult to understand. Another year - another series. What do you remember about the second half of 2020? Protests in Khabarovsk. Rallies in Minsk. Clip of the rap group "Kasta". Second wave of coronavirus. War in Karabakh. Legendary Morgenshtern Dust. Russian brands - "Sputnik V" and "Novichok". Navalny survived and called. And also Tik-Tok and Danya Milokhin with Baskov. All this is in the information and analytical review by Leonid Parfyonov.