Laurel Prize-2026 nominees (longlist)
16
movies
Lavr
October 31, 2026
Announcing the 2026 Longlist!
The first-round jury of the Lavr National Documentary Film Award, comprising directors Irina Vasilyeva, Andrey Erastov, Vitaly Mansky, Alina Rudnitskaya, Konstantin Selin, and Denis Shabayev, carefully reviewed the submitted entries. At an online meeting held on October 19, 2026, the jury selected eight films in each category to advance to the second round of the competition.
Cinema of the Future. DEBUT
"Before the sun", dir. Alisa Tamarova
"Father and son", dir. Egor Gutorov
"Unfilmed", dir. Nikita Zhuravlev
"Karaoke", dir. Olga Kholodova
"Mother", dir. Elizaveta Bobyleva
"Non-fishing day", dir. Denis Tarasov
"Alone", dir. Alexander Abdulyaparov
"Mother, Who Are You?", dir. Veronika Sobol
Cinema of the Future. ART
"Born in the USSR. 35 Years Later", dir. Sergei Miroshnichenko
"Museum", dir. Marina Maria Melnik
"Vitaly Melnikov. A Director’s Fate", dir. Natalia Gugueva
"Cucumbers, potatoes, bread", dir. Ilya Vologurov
"Put on your best dress", dir. Olga Stolpovskaya
"Motherless", dir. Valeria Popova
"Slip", dir. Olesya Fokina
"In Search of Sensory Deprivation", dir. Yulia Kiseleva
In early December, following a closed vote by the Award's Grand Jury, three finalists in each category will be announced. The winners of the Lavr Award in both categories will be revealed on December 12, 2026.
The first-round jury of the Lavr National Documentary Film Award, comprising directors Irina Vasilyeva, Andrey Erastov, Vitaly Mansky, Alina Rudnitskaya, Konstantin Selin, and Denis Shabayev, carefully reviewed the submitted entries. At an online meeting held on October 19, 2026, the jury selected eight films in each category to advance to the second round of the competition.
Cinema of the Future. DEBUT
"Before the sun", dir. Alisa Tamarova
"Father and son", dir. Egor Gutorov
"Unfilmed", dir. Nikita Zhuravlev
"Karaoke", dir. Olga Kholodova
"Mother", dir. Elizaveta Bobyleva
"Non-fishing day", dir. Denis Tarasov
"Alone", dir. Alexander Abdulyaparov
"Mother, Who Are You?", dir. Veronika Sobol
Cinema of the Future. ART
"Born in the USSR. 35 Years Later", dir. Sergei Miroshnichenko
"Museum", dir. Marina Maria Melnik
"Vitaly Melnikov. A Director’s Fate", dir. Natalia Gugueva
"Cucumbers, potatoes, bread", dir. Ilya Vologurov
"Put on your best dress", dir. Olga Stolpovskaya
"Motherless", dir. Valeria Popova
"Slip", dir. Olesya Fokina
"In Search of Sensory Deprivation", dir. Yulia Kiseleva
In early December, following a closed vote by the Award's Grand Jury, three finalists in each category will be announced. The winners of the Lavr Award in both categories will be revealed on December 12, 2026.
A summer camp on the Black Sea coast becomes a place of growing up for teenagers from an orphanage. Masha takes care of her younger sister, Ksyusha faces the consequences of her first love, and Akim holds on to the hope that his father will soon return from the war.
7
Russia, 2026
30 min
Russian
An elderly altar server from Smolensk cannot stop thinking about his son’s fate. But while the father looks back on the past, the son struggles to find his place in a world that has changed around him.
7
Russia, 2026
12 min
Russian
Stories of a small town and its people, who use a camera to capture images in the hope of preserving them. A film about how cinema becomes a repository of memory.
7
Russia, 2026
24 min
Russian
One day was enough to divide Svetlana’s life into “before” and “after.” Her husband left, leaving her to face a new reality on her own. For a year and a half, the camera remained in the hands of her eldest daughter.
An intimate and heartfelt documentary chronicle of how a woman and her loved ones learn to live without the head of the family, confronting their fears and discovering newfound strength.
7
Russia, 2026
40 min
Russian
English
Fishermen from the Dagestani village of Bryansk continue to venture out onto the Caspian Sea, which is retreating farther from the shore each year due to climate change. Their journey grows longer, their catch smaller, but the work goes on.
7
Russia, 2026
32 min
Russian
Russian, English
There are places where time moves so slowly it seems to have stopped. Here, a father and son live together. Their days are filled with work at the ferry crossing, household chores, and a silence that has long said more than words ever could. But time keeps moving forward, and that means that one day, we will all have to say goodbye…
7
Russia, 2026
15 min
no
As a child, Veronika was abandoned by her mother. Years later, she returns to her hometown to make a film about the woman she loves, pities, and still cannot fully forgive. Meeting her alcoholic mother, listening to her grandmother's stories, and retracing the paths of her childhood, Veronika attempts to piece together the history of a family where everyone has their own version of the truth. Gradually, her search for an answer to the question “Mother, Who Are You?” becomes a journey toward understanding herself.
7
Russia, 2026
39 min
Russian
English
The documentary series “Born in the USSR” is a unique cinematic chronicle that began in 1989 and has continued for more than thirty years. The filmmakers follow the lives of twenty children from different republics of the former Soviet Union, revisiting their stories every seven years.
The latest film focuses on the age of 35 — a time of maturity and reassessment, when people find themselves at the midpoint of their lives.
This is a series about generations growing up, the search for identity, and how people change — and how the world changes along with them.
7
Russia, 2026
634 min
Russian, Georgian, Lithuanian, Hebrew, Spanish, Kyrgyz
A portrait of the legendary Pushkin Museum, whose fate is inseparably intertwined with the history of Russia. The film follows two interconnected narratives: the museum’s dramatic history, marked by revolutions, wars, and ideological upheavals, and the remarkable evolution of its exhibitions, where every exhibit carries the memory of bygone eras.
Viewers will discover how the collections were saved during times of turmoil and meet the dedicated custodians whose selfless efforts preserved this priceless heritage for future generations.
“Museum” is a heartfelt reflection on what makes a nation great: dedication to preserving culture, the bonds between generations, and the power of art to help us remain human even in the darkest of times.
7
Russia, 2026
85 min
Russian
A film about the life and fate of filmmaker Vitaly Melnikov. The son of an “enemy of the people,” a student of Yutkevich and Eisenstein, and a witness to both Stalin’s cult of personality and its subsequent dismantling, Melnikov directed such celebrated films as “The Chief of Chukotka,” “Mother Got Married,” “The Elder Son,” “Vacation in September,” “Marry a Captain,” and “Poor, Poor Pavel.”
This documentary about Vitaly Melnikov tells both the personal story of the filmmaker and the history of Russia — two stories that are impossible to separate.
7
Russia, 2026
58 min
Russian
The small town of Gatchina. Husband and wife, he is a 50-year-old owner of a furniture production, but still a paradoxical Donetsk rocker and brawler. She is an Orthodox mother and wife, with a portrait of Che on the wall. Standard Russian people.
7
Russia, 2026
52 min
Russian
Poetry is an attempt to navigate a coordinate system, to repair this world, to entrust it with one's child. A child born in Germany when the war began, now four years old, the same age as the war. The world through the eyes of three women writing poetry.
7
Russia, 2025
60 min
Russian
English
25 years ago she was deprived of parental rights for the first time, and today she and her three children are trying to build a relationship again, but the shadows of the past are between them.
7
Russia, 2026
65 min
Russian
English
A film portrait of Irakli Kvirikadze — screenwriter, filmmaker, and writer. An extended cinematic observation of an eccentric artist whose inner world, his understanding of good and evil, love and loyalty, remain unfathomable to outsiders — and, at times, even to the artist himself.
7
Russia, 2026
90 min
Russian
A recursive film in which the search for a lost masterpiece of Soviet cinema becomes the starting point for an exploration of secret experiments and extreme states of human experience, drawing both the filmmakers and the audience into an abyss beyond the screen.
7
Russia, 2026
52 min
Russian
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