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.

The film focuses around Ina and Nikoloz, eleven and ten years old Georgian children who live in the 2008 Georgia-Russia war refugee village Tserovani. Unlike troubled adults who long for their old homes, the children are oblivious of the past. As they find fun and scary pastimes around the village, they try to reconstruct memories of their past, of where they came from. They don’t remember the war, but it continues to affect their present and future.

This film was shot without a single cut, hidden camera in the Puppet Theater. For 10 minutes, the child watches the performance and the whole gamut of feelings is reflected on his face, from jubilation to absolute horror. In just 10 minutes of an ordinary theatrical performance, a 5-year-old boy gains a huge life experience... An absolute classic of non-fiction films.

Ten-year-old Oleg lives in the eastern part of Ukraine — a warzone that often echoes with anti-aircraft fire and missile strikes. Sometimes these sounds are in the distance, while other times they’re frighteningly close. While many have already left this dangerous area, Oleg remains with his grandmother, who has taken care of him since the death of his mother. They have nowhere else to go. While waiting for the war to end, Oleg enjoys hanging out with his younger cousin Yarik and an older boy Kostia. Together they go on adventures, talk about what makes a real man, test each other’s boundaries, but sometimes they go too far. This observational film follows a year in the life of Oleg and emphasizes the warm bond he has with his grandmother. By sticking close to Oleg, The Distant Barking of Dogs shows the effect of conflict on children.

A film about the life, games and everyday life of a 7-year-old girl from a dysfunctional family living in a forest near a big city. And, as little Milana finds out, from a normal life.

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

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.

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.

Irina Gora, without a roof over her head, at the age of 39 inadvertently gave birth to her friend's son. Vanka turned out to be smart. We have been observing him, eight years old, from the moment of his birth. A kaleidoscope of events: a zoo, marmons, a city bath. But everything in the life of mother and son turned Vanya's letter to Putin.

Our house immerses into the silence of the night, is covered with long shadows, plays with occasional flashes of the warm flame of a kerosene lamp. Darkness for little Stesha turns out to be a tool for the discovery of another world, sometimes scary, sometimes fascinating. Fragments of vague memories, voices, flashes of light – the precious feelings of early childhood that remain with us forever.

Single mother Anna and her four children live in the front-line war zone of Donbas, Ukraine. While the outside world is made up of bombings and chaos, the family is managing to keep their home a safe haven, full of life and full of light. Every member of the family has a passion for cinema, which motivates them to shoot a film inspired by their own life during a time of war. The creative process raises the question about the kind of power the magical world of cinema can have during times of disaster. How to visualize an act of war with imagination? For Anna and the children, transforming trauma into a work of art is the ultimate way to stay human.

Sanyok is an ordinary teacher in a school for difficult teenagers. This school is for children to whom life has left almost no chance. Their parents are most often drug addicts and alcoholics. For 10-15 years these children have seen many terrible things. Fighting with a tough bureaucratic system, Sanyok builds special, trusting relationships with them. So close that sometimes it seems like he is one of them. The fates of the guys develop in different ways, but even if it is possible to save the life of at least one, Sanya will consider that he did not live his life in vain.

In a cottage at the outskirts of a small village surrounded by the Altai Mountains there's a family rejected by the local community. Little by little we learn about their secrets. The story is haunting and it's difficult for the viewer to remember this is a documentary film. The attractive Russian surrealism turns out to be real life. The film was made under „Russia and Poland. New Gaze” project, 1st edition. The project was realized by Eureka Media and Adam Mickiewicz Institute with financial support of Polish Film Institute.

A film about twelve St. Petersburg teenagers who were convicted of criminal offenses under various articles, but received a pardon and their real terms were replaced with conditional ones with the obligation to live in a social rehabilitation center.

The hero of the film is an ordinary Moscow teenager. And he lives a completely ordinary life of a Moscow teenager. With one exception, he is a fan of the game "Dog High", although he has not played it for a long time. But today he will try to play again. According to statistics, over the past 10 years, more than 1,000 teenagers have died from strangulation games.

During the war, children, along with adults, worked in the fields and factories, shouldering household chores on their fragile shoulders. Many of them died from disease and lack of food. There was a severe famine, people were swollen from malnutrition, and in order not to die, they ate grass cakes and porridge with sawdust. "Everything for the front, everything for victory!" it was the slogan of the time. Despite the difficulties, they did not lose heart, worked hard and believed in victory over fascism.

How important it is to be able to see the beautiful in life, even if fate brought you to a remote Bamovsky village. The school librarian teaches children to dream, because this is what distinguishes a person from an animal. For the time being, children laugh at her quirks, but perhaps when they grow up, they will remember her lessons. Henryk contrasts dreams and romance with society's immersion in bestiality. It seems that nothing else can stop the moral decay.

The director set up an experiment on his own son, he filmed the moment when two-year-old Svyatoslav saw a mirror for the first time in his life.

Everyone sees them only as criminals and forgets that they are children. This film is about the fate of teenagers who have committed crimes. They are in a special closed institution and for the first time in their lives they don't have to fight for existence, they don't have to survive. For the first time, they may be who they are, just children.

A unique family lives in the town of Snezhnoye, Donetsk region. The grandson of the once powerful director Himmash, fifteen-year-old Yura Sikanov, extracts coal to feed not only his sisters, but also his mother and stepfather. A heartbreaking story about the survival of children in the conditions of complete indifference of the adult world.