Two people who came to work in Moscow met on a gravel pass. Sanya and Sparrow. One thirty-seven, the other nineteen. The problems started when they stopped paying salaries. Two lost souls lost at the bottom of life and an unexpected happy ending.

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

D’innocents rituels matinaux partagés sur YouTube ou TikTok aux images d’élèves fuyant des tireurs à l’école... ce film d’archives est entièrement composé de vidéos « choc » tournées et postées par des adolescents russes sur les réseaux sociaux. Dans toute la Russie, des élèves filment secrètement leurs enseignants violents. Certains leur disent qu’une femme doit avoir des relations sexuelles avec son mari quand celui-ci le souhaite ; d’autres vont jusqu’à les battre. Les élèves trop critiques peuvent également faire l’objet de rapports sur leurs opinions politiques. Dans ce documentaire, le téléphone portable constitue une sorte de bouclier entre la jeunesse et ce monde brutal. Quelle que soit l’intensité des événements, ils continuent à filmer.

La projection sera suivie d’un débat avec le réalisateur !

This found footage film is composed entirely of often shocking videos that Russian teenagers have posted on social media. Innocent morning rituals on YouTube or TikTok have been placed next to shots of panicking young people fleeing school shooters. And students all over Russia are apparently secretly recording images of violent teachers who can’t keep their hands to themselves. In class, they are told that a woman must have sex with her husband whenever he wants; furthermore, students are called idiots and are beaten. One critical teenager is threateningly told that a report will be made about her political views. The mobile phone forms a kind of shield between the young people and this brutal world. No matter how extreme the events, they keep filming.

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.

Ten-year-old Yula has but one dream - to lead a normal life. For 14 years, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Hanna Polak follows Yula as she grows up in the forbidden territory of Svalka, the garbage dump located 13 miles from the Kremlin in Putin’s Russia. Something Better To Come is Yula’s story - a dramatic tale of coming of age and maturing to the point of taking destiny into one’s own hands. It is a story of hope, courage, and life, all shot in gripping vérité style that stuns with its directness and immediacy.

Young and promising Chechen MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fighter Khavaj must flee from Chechnya to Brussels when his brother discovers his homosexuality and promises to kill him. In an episode of silence, the young man finds comfort in the Planetarium, among the silence of the stars. In this documentary, which traces his first months of life in Belgium, Khavaj slowly observes how the last link that ties him to Chechnya disintegrates. The life of yesterday is in past, but the future is not clear yet.

A documentary about the life of an eight-year-old schoolgirl Gin-mi in Pyongyang, the capital of the DPRK, shot by a Russian filmmaker in a script written by North Korean comrades.

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.

This film is about the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON), one of the many Gulag zones scattered around the country. Used documents and film materials of the 1920-30s. The film features former prisoners of Soviet camps: Dmitry Likhachev, Efim Lagutin, Oleg Volkov, Zoya Marchenko, Olga Adamova-Sliozberg, Anatoly Gorelov and others.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

A spirited 20-year-old Left Block activist tries to find common ground among Russia’s political activists and opposition groups, hoping to bring positive changes to society. Filmed over four years in the provincial city of Yekaterinburg, The Last Relic is a stark cinematic portrait of the absurdity of life in Russia where the majority dreams of restoring imperial glory and a handful of open-minded people desperately resist Putin’s relentless march towards a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Anton Kharitonov, an autistic boy, lives with his mother in a terrible apartment on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. The author meets his future hero shortly before his mother falls seriously ill. Now Anton himself is threatened by a boarding school for the mentally ill, where he will inevitably die, because people with such a diagnosis do not live there for a long time. The struggle for Anton every minute shortens the distance between the author and the hero. And there comes a moment when the author is forced to enter the frame ... The film was awarded the Golden Eagle Prize of the National Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences of Russia - 2012 in the nomination of the Best Non-Fiction Film and the National Cinema Award "Nika" - 2012 in the nomination of the Best Non-Fiction Film.

With the assassination in 1948 by state security officers of the head of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, Solomon Mikhoels, new times begin in the relationship between the Soviet government and Jews. The liquidation of the JAC, the execution of its activists, and the campaign against the "rootless cosmopolitans" form a new state anti-Semitism. The death of Stalin will cancel the massacre, but the former official Russian-Jewish harmony under socialism will no longer be restored. Popularly known superstars have not diminished: Botvinnik is the main chess player, Raikin is the main comedian, Plisetskaya is the main ballerina, Galich and Vysotsky are the main bards, many famous names in various fields, from nuclear physics to light music. But Jews have ceased to be co-authors of Russian communism. And they are no longer allowed into politics, and they themselves are especially actively engaged in "anti-Soviet activities." Without the Jews, the shadow economy is unimaginable, or rather “illegal business”, for which death sentences have been handed down since the early 1960s. And from the middle of the decade, the dissident movement begins to shake the system; the grandchildren of Jewish revolutionaries bring into it the same ardor and fearlessness that their grandfathers did in the overthrow of tsarism. Allowing Jewish emigration in the 1970s makes nationality a means of rejecting socialism and will prove to be a more frequent reason for leaving than the opportunity to reverse one's Russian assimilation. Finally, the collapse of the USSR will put an end to the "Jewish question" in the form in which the last Soviet generations found it.

Madina Mustafina again takes root in the forbidden, taboo territory. The heroine of the picture is a modern 18-year-old girl Zhenya, not burdened with social obligations. As a typical bearer of youth subculture, she is not endowed with special talents and lives an ordinary life of a growing up provincial girl, loves to dance, meets guys, teaches her friends how to kiss. In general, neither the norms of behavior, nor the manner of speech, nor the desire to please, in any other way, does she differ from thousands of other girls. Except for one thing: the girl Zhenya is actually a boy.

A paradoxical personality, former police captain Magomed Shamilov is a hero, sage and devout Muslim. 16 years ago, he created the Independent Trade Union of Police and Prosecutors of Dagestan to fight clannishness, terrorism, and corruption in the “hottest” region of Russia, and he himself is surprised that he is still alive. Don Quixote is immortal.

In the spring of 2017, the Investigative Committee conducted the first searches as part of the criminal case, which everyone now knows as the Serebrennikov case, the Seventh Studio case, or the Platform case. Six people, including a world-famous director, are accused of stealing from the state more than one hundred million rubles allocated for staging performances. And they can go to jail for 10 years for that. Journalists Katerina Gordeeva and Roman Super tried to figure out what the essence of this case is. We talked to people who know what theater is, including in terms of money. We studied financial documents. Communicated with those with whom no one had ever been able to before. They figured out why the applause of the audience and the compliments of the Ministry of Culture turned into arrests. And of course, they went to all the court sessions.