The New Year's garland

The contributors to this film anthology document the flow of time at the turn of 2024 and 2025 in a wide range of cities across Russia, as well as in Kazakhstan, Georgia, Indonesia, and New Zealand. What connects gardens and literary studies? A chair in Kotelniki and a sled on a green lawn in Auckland? Strange black figures by a tree in Pushkin and a white animal by a quiet backwater in the village of Latnoye? Factory steam in St. Petersburg and pigeons in Anapa? Fireworks in Murmansk, the “I Promise” action in Khabarovsk, and the movement of water in the village of Vyazovoye?

Each episode follows the next and is edited in strict chronological order — within a kind of shared, unified time, regardless of time zones. And in the space created by this connection, in a completely wondrous and uncontrollable way, an unexpected link emerges between one point in the world and another. Cinema edits itself, forming a single fabric of time and state.