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."

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.

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.

In Siberia, Russia, Alexander Kuznetsov follows Yulia & Katia who went from an orphanage to a neuropsychiatric institution. Deprived of freedom, work and family, they had no say in it and getting those fundamental rights back is a long and painful bureaucratic process. "We'll be alright" is their path to freedom.

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.

A film about life, about death, about people who have come close to the border between the first and the second. And about love, the brightest manifestation of life.

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.

Yulia is sixteen, she lives in a barracks. And Vanya is with his parents in a five-story building. Julia is expecting a baby, and Vanya's parents are against the misalliance and do not let the couple on the doorstep. "A monstrously real movie about love," as the director himself defines "Mommies." It can be said that this film inherits the Russian literary "natural school", the whole "physiology of Russian life" is presented in such detail in it. But you can also interpret it as a terrible fairy tale, because it is all a metaphor for Russian life.

A young woman recounts her love story against the backdrop of Russia’s troubled first decade of the 21st century. A heartfelt chronicle of Marusya and Kimi’s 12-year-long relationship, wrought with addiction and mental health issues, paints a portrait of an entire generation struggling to find themselves and feeling extremely vulnerable.

An 80-minute episode of military everyday life in Ukraine, filmed in one frame.

This film is about Alexander Orlov, a resident of Soviet intelligence, who disappeared without a trace in Spain in 1938. For more than thirty years, “KGB militants” have been looking for him in order to destroy a man who was involved in most major world operations, in particular, in the export of all gold reserves from Spain to the USSR and the development of an operation to destroy Leon Trotsky.

Petr Pavlensky, artist and activist, is in the vanguard of forging social change in Russia. Through an array of courageous performances, he acts as society's conscience in the face of an increasingly totalitarian state. From lying naked in a coil of barbed wire, to nailing his scrotum to the floor of Red Square, his acts of defiance aim to spark debate and catalyse reform.

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.

The earthquake began on December 7, 1988. No one could yet understand what had happened, but suddenly, at one moment, the telephone connection of the Armenian capital with Leninakan, Spitak and a number of other small towns and villages was interrupted. The entire north of Armenia has practically fallen silent, and this is 40 percent of the entire territory of the republic with a population of one million people. This film is about the life of ordinary people 13 years after a terrible disaster.

90s. Two homeless people live on the street. He is a former musician, she is a former journalist. They consider themselves happy because they love each other. The problem raised by the author touches upon the global themes of the meaning of human existence.

My neighbor is an ordinary person. But after all, if you observe a person long enough, he ceases to be simple, ordinary. I filmed this film from the window of my apartment for several years. Filmed a neighbor and his beloved old car, to which he is endlessly attached. And in the end, unexpectedly, a movie turned out not about a specific person, but about life in general.

An experimental documentary film that delves into the intricate facets of the issue of human dignity humiliation in Russia. The directors provide audiences with an unconventional perspective on situations where individuals are compelled to issue on-camera apologies for their words or actions. Through this experimental narrative approach, viewers will witness how it has become commonplace in modern Russia to extract apologies on camera. Some instances will evoke genuine sympathy as people grapple with public scrutiny. Simultaneously, other scenes will unveil the darker side of this trend, where apologies devolve into mere puppetry, extracted under the threat of personal and professional repercussions. The film incorporates a range of videos capturing moments of sincere apologies driven by a genuine acknowledgment of one's mistakes.

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.

The Nenets live in three worlds. The lower world is where the north is, the upper world is where the south is, the middle world is the road. Yaptik-Khese is the spirit of the Yaptik family. He is carried on sacred sledges and is not shown to anyone. His home is the road. While Yaptik-Khese roams, there will always be deer, dogs, Nenets on the ground.

Every year in Russia, tens of thousands of people are released from places of detention. They return to a free life, sometimes not for long. The most difficult process of adaptation to "freedom" begins. This film is about the newly released, trying to find their own, new way, as well as about people who help the recent prisoners to get on their feet.